Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

Oral Answers to Questions — SLOVAKIA.

Mr. Arthur Henderson: asked the Prime Minister whether His Majesty's Government continues to give de facto recognition to the present Government of Slovakia?

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Butler): His Majesty's Government obtained an exequatur for a Consul in Bratislava in May last, thereby according de facto recognition to the Slovak Government. His Majesty's Government subsequently granted an exequatur to a Slovak Consul in London. During August the German Government extended their military control over the whole of Slovakia and, on 2nd September, His Majesty's Consulate at Bratislava was closed. On 8th September Slovakia was proclaimed to be territory in enemy occupation. The Slovak Consul in London has protested against the occupation of his country by German forces and has declared the aims and ideals of His Majesty's Government and France to be identical with those of

the Slovak people. His Majesty's Government continue to recognise him as the Slovak representative in London.

Mr. Henderson: Does that mean the Government will continue to recognise the present Government in Slovakia as the de facto Government of Slovakia?

Mr. Butler: I have said that Slovakia is in enemy control and must be regarded as such, but we continue to recognise the Slovakian representative in London.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALLIES' WAR AIMS.

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Prime Minister whether it is the policy of His Majesty's Government to publish, in due course of time and jointly with the French Government, a specific statement of war aims, based on the principles already enunciated by His Majesty's Government?

The Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain): His Majesty's Government and the French Government are in complete accord as to the purposes for which we entered the war and these purposes have more than once been already stated by both Governments. No doubt as time goes on both Governments will consider whether their war aims should be stated in more specific form. In any case the hon. and learned Member may take it that any such statement would be made only by agreement between the two Governments.

Miss Rathbone: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a very strong and growing demand in the country for a more specific statement of war aims—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—as the best answer to Herr Hitler's speech?

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

Mr. Dingle Foot: asked the Minister of Pensions why the allowance for the wife of a soldier who receives 100 per cent. disability pension under the Royal Warrant of September, 1939, is only 5s., whereas under the Royal Warrant of 1919 the corresponding allowance was 10s.?

The Minister of Pensions (Sir Walter Womersley): The allowance for the wife of a disabled soldier is awarded to him as an addition to his own pension and must be considered in conjunction with it. Owing to the reduction in the cost of living since 1919 the 37s. 6d. provided under the New War Warrant for a married man who is totally disabled has a purchasing value approximately equal to that in 1919 of the 50s. provided by the Royal Warrant of that year which included a large percentage expressly added to meet the increased cost of living since 1914.

Mr. Foot: Will the Minister deal with the matter to which the question is directed, that is to say, the wife's allowance? Is it not a fact that the cost of living is now about three-quarters of what it was in 1919, and how can that justify a 50 per cent. reduction?

Sir W. Womersley: The hon. Member is entirely wrong. The Prime Minister is answering a question on this matter on Thursday and I would refer him to the reply that will be given then.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: In view of the anxiety caused by the first publication of the latest Royal Warrant, will my hon. Friend consider issuing a statement showing the respective values of this Warrant and the Warrant of 1919 in all respects?

Sir W. Womersley: My hon. Friend must not forestall the question which is to be asked on this subject.

Mrs. Tate: asked the Minister of Pensions why he has formed the opinion that if a totally disabled man requires a pension of 32s. per week a woman, in similar circumstances, requires only 22s. per week?

Sir W. Womersley: The rates of disablement pension payable by my Department are broadly related to the rates of pay of the various classes and ranks, and

the proportionate rates for men and women follow this general rule.

Mrs. Tate: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a woman's pay, being frequently less than a man's pay, does not enable her to save so much; that a disabled man can almost always find a woman to nurse him without remuneration, while a disabled woman is not in that fortunate position?

Oral Answers to Questions — BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS (EXPORT AND IMPORT).

Sir Patrick Harmon: asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether his attention has been called to the dislocation in the export of books in large quantities to the British and Colonial Empire and to the United States of America through the operation of Control of Communications Order (No. 2), which became operative on 25th September last; whether books forwarded by book-post to the British Empire and the United States of America are being forwarded without permit; and whether, in the case of reputable commercial firms, consignments of books in bulk can be granted exemption from the provisions of the order?

Sir Richard Wells: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the hardship caused by the restrictions on the import and export of primed books and newspapers to neutral countries; and what action he proposes to take?

The Financial Secretary to the War Office (Sir Victor Warrender): I have been asked to reply. It will be appreciated that the conveyance of books and newspapers to and from places abroad cannot be allowed, generally, without control and that the best method of control is to confine the channels of conveyance to reputable firms to whom permits are being granted. Owing to the very large number of applications for permits, there has naturally been some initial delay in their issue. In the meantime, books sent by book post to the British Empire and the United States are being forwarded without permits.

Sir P. Hannon: Is the House to understand that there will not be the same difficulty in future where reputable firms are concerned in the granting of permits for the export of books?

Sir V. Warrender: Once the scheme gets going I do not think there will be any difficulty.

Mr. Ridley: Has the hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn to the fact that publications have been confiscated at the port of embarkation and have been purchasable on the boat after the passengers have embarked? Does not the censorship completely fail in these circumstances?

Sir V. Warrender: I do not think so, because the regulations enforce the expert of books and newspapers only by post, but a person would be getting round that by taking a book out on his person, and thereby convey information which he would otherwise not be able to get out of the country.

Oral Answers to Questions — EXPORT LICENCES.

Sir Granville Gibson: asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether his attention has been called to the difficulties caused to the expert trade by the continuing delay in the issue of export licences; and will he take stops to remedy this?

Mr. R. S. Hudson (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): As my right hon. Friend stated on 3rd October, certain difficulties and delays have occurred in the issue of export licences. Since that date with the co-operation of the other Departments concerned the machinery has been expedited, and the arrears have now been practically cleared off. A total of some 70,000 export licences has been issued since the outbreak of war of which no less than 37,000 were issued last week. In addition, a certain number of applications for licences has, of course, been refused, and about 13,000 letters have been sent to exporters informing them that no licence was necessary. This will give hon. Members some idea of the task which confronted this newly-created Department. It is the aim to give a definite answer to applicants in the course of a few days whenever this is possible though there must necessarily be cases where special investigation necessitates a longer period.

Sir G. Gibson: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his reply, which is very gratifying to exporting industries,

may I ask whether he will consider the advisability of granting general licences for exports to the Dominions and countries outside Europe on the basis of exports in a certain past period in order to avoid the necessity of wasting time in making specific applications in respect of separate parcels going abroad, some of them of small value or quantity?

Mr. Hudson: We are engaged in trying to find some means of making the position easier for exporters. We are fully aware of the importance of this country maintaining the export trade.

Mr. Robert Gibson: Will preference be given to export licences to the Dominions over export licences to neutral countries?

Mr. Hudson: I do not think I can give a general answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

TRACTORS.

Sir P. Hannon: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will make a statement on the arrangements which have been made with machinery committees of county war agricultural executives for the distribution of tractors during the current month and the month of November?

The Minister of Agriculture (Colonel Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith): Particulars of my Department's plans regarding the organisation of agricultural machinery for the ploughing-up campaign are contained in a circular letter issued to county war agricultural executive committees on 18th September, a copy of which I am sending to my hon. Friend. Committees who have notified my Department that they are in a position to use tractors have had an initial consignment delivered to them. Further supplies will be sent during the current month and in November if required.

Mr. Thorne: Is the Minister completely satisfied with the amount of land which is now being ploughed up?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: It is going very well.

Mr. de Rothschild: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman taking steps to differentiate between the kinds of land to which these tractors are going; is he


aware that in parts of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire farmers are dissatisfied with the tractors they have got; and will he see that they get the right tractors for their types of land?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: We are trying to see to that. The House will realise that our choice of home manufacturers was limited when we started to build up these reserves.

PRICES.

Sir P. Hannon: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the anxiety felt by both farmers and merchants in provincial towns on the prices to be paid for next year's crops; and whether he will allay the uncertainty which prevails and stimulate additional cultivation by a specific undertaking that a minimum price will be operative?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: As my hon. Friend is aware the Government will be purchasing the whole of the staple crops grown for next year's harvest and sold off the farm at prices to be fixed in the light of prevailing circumstances. Farmers will therefore have a guaranteed market and prices for their principal products. As I have already announced, all relevant factors including variations in costs of production will be taken into account in fixing prices from time to time.

Sir P. Hannon: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend take immediate steps to make these facts known to the farmers who do not really seem to understand the situation?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: I think that most of them do understand.

CREDITS.

Mr. De la Bére: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will consider introducing a scheme, as a war-time measure, for granting credit facilities to farmers through the big banking organisations, whereby the Government guaranteed the farmers indebtedness to the big banking organisations, which would enable farmers to borrow money at 3 per cent. with a view to assisting them in carrying on and increasing production from the farms throughout the country?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: While I fully appreciate the need for adequate credit

in connection with the campaign for increasing home food production and have the matter under consideration, I could not see my way to adopt my hon. Friend's suggestion.

Mr. De la Bére: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that production is being curtailed owing to the lack of credit facilities, and that where they are available usurious rates of interest are being charged? Is it not the fact that the whole of this thing would have been cleared up but for certain unenlightened Treasury officials, and is it not an absolute scandal that nothing is being done?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: My hon. Friend is probably aware that some such scheme as he has in mind was in operation during the last war, and was not satisfactory.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, LANCASHIRE (CHAIRMAN).

Mr. Logan: asked the Minister of Agriculture the grounds on which Sir Miles E. Mitchell, a colliery agent, was appointed chairman of the war agricultural executive for Lancashire?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: In view of the experience which Sir Miles Mitchell has had of local government administration and on the Council of Agriculture for England, of which he has been a member for ten years, I am satisfied that he possesses the qualifications desirable in the chairman of a war agricultural executive committee.

Mr. T. Williams: Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman regard a part-time farmer as being the best farmer in Lancashire for this purpose?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: Well, there are many qualifications which have to be taken into account.

Mr. George Griffiths: Is not this man's special qualification that he is very prominent in housing all over the country?

FEEDING-STUFFS.

Mr. De la Bére: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the shortage of feeding-stuffs and wheat offals for cattle, steps will be taken to curtail the supply of these products to those manufacturers who convert them into small cubes at uneconomic prices,


since the Government control does not permit of these uneconomic prices being paid?

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. W. S. Morrison): I have been asked to reply. As the prices of practically all animal feeding-stuffs are fixed by the Feeding-stuffs (Maximum Prices) Order, 1939, I do not think that action upon the lines suggested by my hon. Friend is called for.

Mr. De la Bére: Is my right hon. Friend aware that these compound mixtures are normally sold at 50 per cent. above their cost of production, and would it not be far better to let the ingredients of which these cubes are made be sold at an economic price to farmers, in view of the shortage of feeding stuffs? We do not want these compound mixtures.

Mr. Morrison: If, as the hon. Member says, owing to the control it is no longer economic for the manufacturers to produce these compound feeding stuffs, I should think it is not necessary by order to prohibit their manufacture.

Mr. De la Bére: Is it not a fact that the milling combines are using a good deal of feeding stuffs for this purpose, and would it not be better to direct them on to the market through the normal channels without their being made into these fantastic cubes?

Mr. Morrison: I think the compounds to which the hon. Member refers are useful, and also that prominent suppliers can be trusted to make the most economical use of the resources at their disposal.

Mr. Purbrick: Is the Minister aware that the method of feeding cattle by cubes is looked upon generally as being the most scientific and the most economic?

PLOUGHED-UP GRASS LAND.

Commander Locker-Lampson: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will make an advance of £5 an acre to farmers and smallholders for the utilisation and ploughing-up of their land?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: Provision is already made in Part IV of the Agricultural Development Act, 1939, whereby grants of £2 per acre may be paid to farmers who plough up grassland subject to certain conditions. I do not think that

the amount of the grant is inadequate for the purpose.

WOMEN'S LAND ARMY.

Colonel Arthur Evans: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that in the discussion at the Glamorgan Agricultural Committee's meeting at Cardiff on Wednesday, 4th October, it was reported that the agricultural director for the county requested that regulations should be imposed on girls of the Women's Land Army being trained at Tregoes, to ensure their being in their billets by 9 p.m., because of their association with men in uniform; whether he will see that such a regulation is not enforced; and, as these women who have volunteered for duty on the land are as capable of conducting them selves in a proper manner as women in other branches of National Service, whether he will take steps to discourage restrictions of this nature being imposed?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: I have seen Press reports of the meeting in question, but I believe that they are exaggerated and misleading. While members of the Women's Land Army who are placed in official training centres, will of course, be expected to conform to such regulations as are considered necessary by the authority responsible for the centre, no general regulations of the kind suggested in the question are contemplated for members of the Women's Land Army.

Colonel Evans: Does my right hon. and gallant Friend consider that it would be an inducement to recruiting to have a regulation requiring these young women to be in their billets by 9 o'clock, having regard to the regulation at present in force for the A.T.S.; and having regard to the heavy load his Department is carrying at present, does he think it desirable to have these pinpricks by busybodies who are anxious to set themselves up as dictators of people's morals basing themselves solely on envy, rumours and spite?

TRACTOR PLOUGHS, FROME.

Mrs. Tate: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware of the perturbation felt by the war ploughing-up sub-committee in the Frome division owing to their inability to get new ploughs for tractors, either by private order, long since given, or by way of the county committees; and whether, in view of the


urgency of the question, he will take immediate steps to remedy the shortage?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: I am aware that owing to the increased demand from farmers since the outbreak of war the stocks of tractor ploughs in the hands of the trade have been exhausted. Home manufacturers are working to full capacity to meet the farmers' demand, and importers have also arranged to increase their supplies. I have made purchases of ploughs imported from North America for immediate use with Government tractors operated by county war agricultural executive committees. I have supplied 20 tractors and 20 ploughs to the Somerset committee, and I expect that further supplies of ploughs will be available for committees at the end of the present month.

Mrs. Tate: While thanking my right hon. Friend may I ask him to see that some of those ploughs are diverted to the Frome division?

MANOR HOUSE FARM, OLD BRINSLEY.

Mr. Viant: (for Mr. Cocks) asked the Minister of Agriculture whether the district committee of the war agricultural executive has yet examined Manor House Farm, Old Brinsley, Nottinghamshire, and other farms in the same ownership; and, if so, are they satisfied with the condition of the land and the use to which it is put?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: I have no information as to whether the Nottinghamshire War Agricultural Executive Committee have yet arranged for an inspection of the property mentioned by the hon. Member, but I am ascertaining, and will communicate with him.

Mr. T. Williams: During these investigations will the local committee also ascertain whether the tenant farmer is to be entitled to farm his own land or whether he is obliged to farm under the instructions of the local bank manager?

ALLOTMENTS (UNEMPLOYMENT ALLOWANCES).

Sir Percy Hurd: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether in order to ensure the fullest possible use of allotments for food production, he will consult with the Ministers concerned to ensure that the

value of the produce of such allotments will not be deducted from unemployment allowance and that allotment-holders will be given at least a seasonal security of tenure?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: The Unemployment Assistance Board inform me that it is not their practice to make any reduction in allowances in respect of the produce for consumption by their households of allotments cultivated by persons in receipt of allowances. As regards the last part of the question, the Cultivation of Lands (Allotments) Order, 1939, made on 18th September last, provides that no arrangement under the Order for the cultivation of land as allotments shall be terminated, except for a breach of the terms of the arrangement, between 6th April and 29th September in any year unless my consent is previously obtained.

Mr. G, Griffiths: Is the Minister not aware that if a man keeps a few poultry the money they bring him in is taken into account? A chap in my division had 2s. 6d. a week knocked off his allowance because he kept a few pullets and a cockerel.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

PRESS MESSAGES (NEUTRAL COUNTRIES).

Mr. Ridley: asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware of the considerable difficulties being experienced by the London correspondents of newspapers published in neutral countries, because of the unsatisfactory mail, cable and telephone services; and whether he will take immediate steps to effect an improvement?

Mr. Viant: asked the Postmaster-General what representations have been made to his Department by Press representatives as to the difficulties in sending telephonic communications to neutral countries; and is anything being done to meet them?

The Postmaster-General (Major Tryon): Some delay in the transmission of mails to countries abroad is inevitable owing to restrictions in overseas transport services; but mails are being despatched at every suitable available opportunity. Correspondence for countries abroad is subject to censorship; but I understand that my right hon. and Noble Friend the Minister of Information


has recently issued an announcement advising Press correspondents sending matter by post for publication abroad how they can avoid delay from this cause. The change-over from peace-time to wartime conditions in the cable services involved the imposition of censorship and was accompanied by a heavy increase in the volume of traffic. In these circumstances some delay in the transmission of Press messages was unavoidable; but every effort has been made to eliminate such delay; and a more rapid service is now being given. As regards the telephone services, it was necessary on the imposition of censorship to suspend overseas telephone services. It has now been possible to make special arrangements whereby the telephone services to certain countries may be used under suitable safeguards for the transmission of Press messages; and I understand that this facility is much appreciated by the Press.

Mr. Ridley: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind that what are regarded as the present unsatisfactory arrangements are having a very serious effect indeed upon the dissemination of news of Britain and Britain's efforts in neutral countries, into which Nazi propaganda is literally being poured by every means available? Therefore, will he consider an improvement in this service as being a matter of urgent importance?

Major Tryon: We are doing all we can to improve the service, and I quite realise the importance of the point made by the hon. Member.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Will the Minister consider a great extension of the air mail services, if necessary by the use of neutral aircraft?

Major Tryon: I will certainly consider that.

FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS (DELIVERIES).

Mr. de Rothschild: asked the Postmaster-General the reason for the delay, in some cases over a fortnight, in the delivery of foreign and especially American newspapers to this country; and whether, in view of the importance of this country being adequately informed of foreign opinion, he will take steps to secure more prompt deliveries in future?

Major Tryon: Newspapers from the United States of America and foreign

countries generally are being delivered without delay on arrival in this country; but arrangements for the despatch of the mails are made by the Post Office of the country of origin and the time of transmission naturally depends upon the speed and frequency of the ships selected by that country for the conveyance of its mails.

Mr. de Rothschild: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman quite certain that newspapers, after their arrival in this country, are not submitted to any censorship here?

Major Tryon: If the hon. Member refers to United States newspapers, there is at present no censorship. It may interest him to know that for 12 days no mails at all, either letters or newspapers, came from the United States. There was a gap of 12 days, for which the British Post Office is not responsible.

Mr. de Rothschild: The Ministry of Information in this country is not holding them up?

Major Tryon: No, this delay of 12 days was due, I understand, to the shipping strike in New York.

SOLDIERS' LETTERS (SURCHARGES).

Mr. Windsor: asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that in certain cases letters received by the relatives of soldiers now serving overseas have been surcharged; and whether, when he is discussing postal arrangements with the Service Departments, he will ensure that the practice of charging extra postage on soldiers' letters will be discontinued?

Major Tryon: Letters from troops in a theatre of war are exempt from postage up to two ounces in weight. The concession of free postage does not extend to other troops abroad. If the hon. Member will furnish me with particulars of the cases he has in mind, I will have inquiry made.

MINERS' WELFARE COMMITTEE.

Mr. Whiteley: asked the Secretary for Mines what interruption has taken place in the work of the Miners' Welfare Committee?

The Secretary for Mines (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd): It is the intention of the Miners' Welfare Committee to continue welfare


work as far as is possible under war conditions. Buildings in course of erection at the outbreak of war are being completed, but there has necessarily been interruption in the placing of new contracts. The normal programme will be resumed so far as circumstances permit.

Mr. Whiteley: Does the hon. Gentleman mean in that answer that those pit-head baths and welfare schemes now in the course of construction will be completed?

Mr. Lloyd: So far there has been scarcely any gap.

Mr. George Hall: Is the additional halfpenny levy which was added to the miners' welfare levy now being charged?

Mr. Lloyd: I must have notice of that question.

Mr. G. Griffiths: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Government have taken over the convalescent homes of the miners who now have nowhere to go?

Mr. Lloyd: That is a different question.

ECONOMIC WARFARE.

Mr. Denman: asked the Prime Minister which Minister is responsible for the purchase of commodities which cannot be stopped as contraband but are better kept out of Germany?

The Prime Minister: The responsibility for purchases of commodities which are controlled by His Majesty's Government rests with the Ministers of Supply and Food and the President of the Board of Trade, according to the nature of the goods. The purchasing Departments are in close touch with the Ministry of Economic Warfare on the question of commodities which it may be desirable to purchase in order to deny them to Germany.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF INFORMATION.

GERMANY (BRITISH LEAFLETS).

Mr. Walkden: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information whether he is aware of the unsatisfactory style in which the Government's statements for distribution in leaflet form by members of the Royal Air

Force have been translated into German; and whether he is now arranging for reliable and competent friendly refugees of journalistic experience who are closely familiar with the language and the popular expressions of the German people to scrutinise the drafts of future leaflets and advise the Ministry thereon?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information (Sir Edward Grigg): The merits of the style of these leaflets are, of course, a matter of opinion, but I would draw the hon. Member's attention to Field-Marshal Goering's speech on nth September when he said of the leaflets:
They are written in good German and it can be seen they come from outcast Germans … and not from Britons.
With regard to the second part of the question, this point is receiving sympathetic attention. I can assure the hon. Member that expert advice, including advice from Germans, has been and is being taken in the preparation of the leaflets.

Mr. Walkden: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that on Thursday last there was very sharp criticism in the Press of the nature of some of the leaflets that have been distributed?

Sir E. Grigg: Yes, Sir, but criticism is inevitable. I am afraid that there never can be agreement on the merits of the leaflets. I think I have answered the point put in the question in relation to the German.

ORGANISATION.

Mr. Lewis: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information whether the plans for the Ministry of Information, for which the present Lord Privy Seal was responsible, were put into operation after the outbreak of war; or whether the Minister of Information modified to any substantial extent these plans before they were put into operation?

Sir E. Grigg: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative; and accordingly, the second part does not arise.

Brigadier-General Spears: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, how many of the redundant staff of the Ministry have been


or will be transferred to other Government Departments, and to what Government Departments they are being transferred?

Sir E. Grigg: As the answer involves a number of figures, I am circulating a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement:

Under the rearrangement of the work of the Ministry recently announced, the following transfers of staff have been made from the Ministry, with effect from midnight 8th-9th October, to the


Admiralty
9


Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
2


Air Ministry
8


Colonial Office
4


Dominions Office
2


Board of Education
2


Ministry of Food
1


Foreign Office
14


Ministry of Health
2


Home Office
1


India Office
2


Ministry of Labour
2


Board of Trade
1


Scottish Office
1


War Office
9

In addition, the censorship staff of the Ministry, consisting of more than 300 persons, and the staff responsible for the centralised issue of Government news to the Press and the B.B.C., exceeding 50 persons, have been transferred to the organisation of which Sir Walter Monckton is in charge.

Sir H. Williams: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information whether he will arrange to publish a list of the headquarters staff of the Ministry, other than clerical and messengers, stating the salary of each officer, and a statement of their previous occupations?

Sir E. Grigg: I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT a list giving the information asked for in my hon. Friend's question.

Following is the list:

Minister.

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Macmillan, P.C., G.C.V.O. (£5,000).

Chief Adviser to the Minister and Controller of Press Relations.

The Lord Cam rose (Unpaid).

Parliamentary Secretary.

Sir Edward Grigg, K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O., D.S O., M.C., M.P. (£1,500).

Director-General.

Sir S. Findlater Stewart, G.C.B., G.C.I.E., C.S.I. (£3,000). Civil Servant.

Deputy Director-General.

A. P. Waterfield, C.B. (£2,000). Civil Servant.

Assistant Director-General.

Ivison S. Macadam, C.B.E., M V.O. (Not yet fixed). Secretary Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Adviser on Foreign Publicity.

The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Perth, P.C., G.C.M.G., C.B. (Not yet fixed). Civil Servant.

Directors.

Sir Joseph Ball, K.B.E. (Unpaid). Deputy Chairman, National Publicity Bureau.
E. St. J. Bamford, C.M.G. (£1,150—£1,500) Civil Servant.
J. B. Beresford, C.B.E. £1,150—£1,500). Civil Servant.
Lt.-Gen. Sir Ronald Charles, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. (Unpaid). Army (retired).
E. T. Crutchley, C.B., C.M.G. (£1,650). Civil Servant.
W. Surrey Dane (Not yet fixed). Publicity Director.
Professor John Hilton (Not yet fixed). Professor Cambridge University.
H. V. Hodson (Not yet fixed). Editor "Round Table."
Sir Kenneth Lee, LL.D. (Unpaid). Manufacturer.
Sir Frederick Whyte, K.C.S.I., LL.D. (Not yet fixed). Director of English Speaking Union.

Other Posts.

G. H. F. Abraham (£600—£800) Major, Royal Marines (retired).
L. Adie (£400—£500). Secretary, International Research Association.
A. L. B. Ashton (£1,161). Civil Servant.
G. A. Aynsley (£700—£860). Civil Servant.
M. G. Balfour (£600—£800). Tutor, Oxford.
R. E. Balfour (£600—£800). Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
D. N. Barbour (£600—£800). Writer.
Miss G. M. Barker (£250—£325). Secretary of Public Affairs Committee E.S.U.
Miss M. P. Beardsley (£204). Civil Servant.
R. E. Beausire (£600—£800). Commercial.
O. Bell (£600—£800). Director, British Film Institute.
W. Beninck (£600—£800). Commercial.
P. H. Bennett (£600—£800). Travel and Industrial Development Association.
R. A. P. Bevan (£1,000). Publicist
J. W. Bird (£286). Typographer.
Mrs. P. C. Biscoe (£250—£325). Secretary.
W. F. Blute (£325). Proof Reader.
H. E. Bowman, C.M.G., C.B.E. (£600—£800). Director of Education, Palestine.
H. C. Bowen (£600—£800). Civil Servant.
S. J. Bown (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
H. B. Brenan (£600—£800). Travel and Industrial Development Association.


Lt.-Col. C. E. D. Bridge, C.M.G., D.S.O. £1,450—£1,650). Secretary-General, British Council.
G. W. Browne (£625—£1,100). Civil Servant.
Miss E. T. Brydie (£250—£325). Private Secretary.
E. Burney (£625—£1,100). Civil Servant.
T. Burns (£250—£350). Journalist.
R. D. O. Butler (£250—£350). Fellow of All Souls, Oxford.
Professor E. H. Carr (£800—£1,000). Civil Servant (retired).
O. H. Bonham-Carter (£600—£800). Civil Servant.
E. C. Chancellor (£600—£800). Army (retired).
S. D. Charles (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
W. C. Chesterman (£650—£750). Civil Servant.
D. K. Clarke (£600—£800). General Secretary, Conservative Research Department.
S. Clarke (£600—£800). Publicist.
H. Claughton, C.B.E. (£600—£800). Clerk of the Court, London University.
E. G. Collieu (£600—£800). Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.
V. E. Cornelius (Unpaid). Diplomatic Service.
Sir K. Cornwallis, K.C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O. (£600—£800). Egyptian Civil Service.
W. L. Cottier £625—£1,100). Civil Servant.
H. D. R. Cowan (£800—£1,150). Civil Servant.
H. H. Croll (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
W. G. Crossley (£700—£860). Civil Servant.
R. H. S. Crossman (£750). Journalist and Publicist.
Miss M, B. Culley (£250—£325). Conservative Central Office.
H. R. Cummings (£600—£800). B.B.C.
J. R. Darling (£800—£1,000). Headmaster.
F. O. Darvall, M.A., Ph.D. (£600—£800). Journalist and Public Relations Officer of English Speaking Union.
Miss M. L. Davis (£250—£325). Royal Institute of International Affairs.
E. M. O'R. Dickey (£1,200—£1,400). Civil Servant.
Dr. G. C. Dixon (£500—£650). Editor of Official Journal, League of Nations.
F. H. Dowden (£400—£700). Civil Servant.
C. Drew (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
W. R. Elliott (£625—£1,100). Civil Servant.
E. J. Embleton (£832). Publicity Manager.
B. Ifor Evans (£800—£1,000). Professor English Language, University of London.
K. Fairfax (£338). Journalist.
B. D. Farrer (£436). Journalist.
R. Ferguson (£500). Civil Servant.
G. E. G. Forbes (£1,150—£1,500). Civil Servant.
Miss R. Foster (£350—£425). Local Education Authority.
H. R. Francis (£1,000). Commercial Advertising.
J. H. Francis (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
R. Fraser (£1,000). Journalist.
L. D. Gammans (£800). Civil Servant.
J. F. Gennings, C.I.E., C.B.E. (£600—£800). Director of Information, Commissioner of Labour, etc., Bombay.
Miss E. A. Gilbert (£450). Layout and Typographer.
Miss M. C. Glasgow (£400—£590). Civil Servant.
C. B. Good (£600—£800). Commercial.

E. J. Gough (£450). Secretary of European Group, Indian Central Legislature.
Dr. R. W. Greaves (£400). Lecturer, London University.
H. E. B. Green (£400—£700). Civil Servant.
R. B. Green (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
G. K. Grierson (£650—£1,100). Civil Servant
Lady (James) Grigg (£500—£650). Secretary, Pilgrim Trust.
H. W. Grigsby (£1,000). Publicist.
K. Grubb (£800—£1,000). Director of Research Survey Trust.
A. A. F. Haigh (£275—£625). Diplomatic Service.
Lord Hailey (Unpaid).
D. H. W. Hall (£900—£1,100). Civil Servant.
D. J. Hall (£600—£800). Civil Servant.
W. A. B. Hamilton (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
Miss V. S. Handcock (£250—£325). Political and Economic Planning.
Professor V. Harlow (£800—£1,000). Professor, King's College, London.
S. Heald (£600—£800). Civil Servant.
A. J. Henderson (£600—£800). Journalist.
A. G. Higher, M.B.E. (£900—£1,050). Civil Servant.
Viscount Hood (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
Hon. R. Hope (£600—£800). Schoolmaster.
Gervas Huxley (Unpaid). Technical Member, International Tea Marketing Board.
Professor E. E. Jackh (£800—£1,000). Professor of International Affairs.
E. J. W. Jackson (£1,100—£1,200). Civil Servant.
E. H. Jeffs (£250—£350). Editor of "Christian World."
K. R. Johnstone (£800—£1,100). Diplomatic
Service.
A. Hope-Jones, M.A. (£600—£800). Lecturer, Cambridge University.
R. V. Jones (Unpaid). Liberal Party Organisation.
J. M. Judd (£962). Publicity Manager.
M. V. Kitchin (£400—£500). Reuters.
Miss B. Lawrence (£250—£325). Statistician.
F. Burton Leach, C.I.E. (£600—£800).
Indian Civil Servant (retired).
A. Lindsey (£600—£800). Secretariat of Social and Economic Research Society.
Miss M. W. Lloyd (£250—£325). Civil Servant.
M. Trappes-Lomax (£400—£500). Journalist.
L. M. MacBride (£1,000). Journalist.
D. MacDermot (£800). Consular Service.
J. C. S. Macgregor (£600—£800). B.B.C.
G. T. Maclean (£1,500). Consular Service.
K. Maclennan (£1,000). Secretary, Conference of Missionary Societies.
Miss E. Macleod (£350—£450) Editorial Assistant, Lord Hailey's African Survey.
Miss J. O. McLachlan (£250—£325). Fellow Girton College, Cambridge.
N. F. McNicholl (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
J. E. Madden (£600—£800). Commercial.
H. T. Maling (£400). Research Assistant.
P. de la H. le Marquand (£275—£525). Civil Servant.
R. H. K. Marett {£600—£800). Newspaper Correspondent.
J. G. Marshall (£700). Art Editor.
Rev. H. Martin (£600—£800). Managing Director of Student Movement Press.


Prof. B. J. Matthews, M.A. (£600—£800). Professor of Christian World-Relations, Boston University.
R. Nunn May (£600—£"800). General Secretary, National Union of Students.
Miss P. Mearns (£250—£325). Private Secretary.
C.de Mornay (£468). Artist.
E. R. Mount (£468). Artist.
L. O. Nash (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
E. Max Nicholson (£1,000). General Secretary, Political and Economic Planning.
D. O'Donovan (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
C D. W. O'Neill (£600—£800). Diplomatic Service (retired).
Hon. E. Packenham (Unpaid). Fellow, Oxford University.
J. M. Parrish (£1,000). Chief Copywriter.
G. Parsloe (£700). Secretary and Librarian, Institute of History.
Professor (Miss) L. M. Penson, LL.D. (£1,000). Professor Modern History, London University.
A. D. Peters (£600—£800). Literary and Dramatic Agent.
M. W. Phillips (£450). Labour Party Organisation.
R. E. R. Phillips (£510—£940). Civil Servant.
E. D. P. Pinks (£600—£800). Commercial.
Miss O. W, Pound (£700—£940). Civil Servant.
J. A. P. Powers (£250). Statistical Research Worker.
Sir John Pratt (£800—£1.000). Consular Service.
F. G. Price (£550—££50). Civil Servant.
R. Ronton (£400—£500). Parliamentary Agent.
H. V. Rhodes (£1,100 plus £100 allowance). Civil Servant.
J. Duval Rice (£400—£500). Journalist.
J. G. Hughes-Roberts, "M.V.O. (£700—££860). Civil Servant.
W. G. Robinson (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
D. A. Routh (£525). University of Oxford Lecturer.
H. S. Scott (£400). Director of Education, Transvaal.
G. F. Seel (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
Gordon Selfridge (Jnr.) (Unpaid). Business Director.
C. L. Shard (£1,000). Book Editorial and Production.
R. Sharp (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
F. C. Sharpley (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
C. H. Gibbs-Smith (£337—£563). Civil Servant.
P. L. Hamilton-Smith (Unpaid). Clerk.
H. G. Smith (£286). Artist.
Miss Thyra Smith (£510—£940). Civil Servant.
H. P. Smollett (£800—£1,000). Exchange Telegraph Co.
Mrs. J. Spicer (£250—£325). Commercial.
G. Spry (£600—£800). Editor.
V. J. G. Stavridi (£600—£800). Solicitor.
A. B. Steel (£600—£800). Secretary of Faculty of Board of History, Cambridge.
Miss M. Stephens (£250—£325). Secretary.
R. B. Stevens (£600—£800). Consular Service.
W. H. Stevenson (£1,200). Journalist and Publicist.
A. Stewart (£600—£800). B.B.C.
G. H. Stewart (£250—£350). Assistant to Professor Hilton.

M. N. E. Stewart (£337—£563). Civil Servant.
C. W. Strickland (£728). Office Manager.
R. Syme (£600—£800). Trinity College, Oxford.
A. C. B. Symon (£800—£1,100). Civil Servant.
Charles Tower (£800—£1,000). Journalist.
S. E. Trenaman (£550—£650). Civil Servant.
C. T. Trumble (£364). Artist.
W. G. V. Vaughan (£1,000). Publicist.
Miss P. M. Veit (£250—£325). Secretary.
Sir Edward Villiers (£800). Director of New World Pictures Ltd.
M. Vinden (£250—£350). Professor of Music, Trinity College.
Prot. E. A. Walker (£600—£800). Professor, Cambridge University.
A. F. Watts (£625—£1,100). Civil Servant.
H. G. G. Welch (£1,150—£1,500). Civil Servant.
Miss J. M. Westley (£250—£325). Royal Institute of International Affairs.
L. F. Rushbrooke-Williams, C.B.E., J.P. (£1,000). Civil Servant.
Lady Rhys Williams, D.B.E. (£500—£650). Hon. Secretary, Joint Council of Midwifery.
J. A. Williamson (£600—£800). Member of Council, Historical Association.
A. D. Wilson (£337—£504). Civil Servant.
G. O. Wiskeman (£600—£800). Commercial.
Dr. T. Wood (£600—£800). Author and Musical Composer.
D.B. Woodburn (£800—£1,100 plus £100 allowance). Civil Servant.
Miss M. Wrong (£500—£650). Secretary, Christian Literature Committee.
G. P. Young (£275—£625). Civil Servant.
H. R. M. Young (£550—£650). Civil Servant.

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS (STAFF).

Mr. Lipson: asked the Minister of Labour how many appointments have been made by his Department since the outbreak of war to supplement staffs of existing Government Departments and to staff newly-established Departments; and how many of these appointments were made from persons on the special National Service Register at the Ministry of Labour?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Assheton): The responsibility for making appointments to supplement staffs of the existing Government Departments and to staff newly established Departments rests with the Departments concerned and not with the Ministry of Labour and National Service.

Mr. Lipson: Has the attention of those responsible been drawn to this matter, as it is very important that greater use be made of it?

Mr. Assheton: Yes, Sir, attention has been drawn to the matter.

Sir Percy Harris: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that anybody who applies to any of the Departments of State is always referred to the Ministry of Labour and told that the only chance of being appointed is to register, as apparently that is the one channel of communication for anybody who wants to apply for a job in any Department of State?

Mr. Assheton: The object of the Central Register which is maintained at the Ministry of Labour and National Service is to provide suitable additional personnel in Government Departments and elsewhere when requested.

Sir P. Harris: Yes, but are they requested, and when they want people do they go to the Ministry of Labour? Most of the people who apply and are registered never hear any more about it.

Mr. Assheton: My right hon. Friend answered a question on this subject last week in which he said that, up to the end of September, orders for 4,695 vacancies had been received, of which the great majority were made by Government Departments, and for these orders 3,479 names had been submitted to the Department or to the employers concerned.

Sir P. Harris: What percentage does that represent of those who are on the
Register?

Mr. Assheton: I was relating the number of names submitted to the number of orders received by the Register.

Mr. R. Gibson: How many are on the Register?

Mr. Assheton: About 95,000.

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he will reconsider his decision to fix the payment of retired postal and other civil servants re-engaged during the emergency, at the salary at the date of their retirement when that figure is below the rate of pay recently settled by the arbitration tribunal?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Captain Crookshank): I am glad to have the opportunity of removing misapprehensions which have arisen on this matter.

The existing arrangements do not result in the payment to re-employed officers who retired on age grounds of rates of pay below those now in operation for the grade. If such an officer is re-employed in his old grade he will be paid the equivalent of his retiring salary, but it is provided that if this is less than the current minimum for that grade he will be paid that minimum. These arrangements have the advantage of simplicity, and, in the opinion of the Government, are entirely fair to the officers concerned.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL DEFENCE.

EVACUATION (CHILDREN, LONDON).

Sir P. Harris: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education whether he can give any estimate of the number of children of school age now in London; whether the number is increasing due to their return from the areas to which they have been evacuated; and whether he is proposing any form of propaganda both to persuade parents to keep their children in the country and, if still in London, to agree to their evacuation?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education (Mr. Kenneth Lindsay): I am not yet able to give an estimate of the number of children of school age now in London. I am aware that the number has been increasing owing to the return of evacuated children; on the other hand my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health is arranging, as recently announced, for the evacuation of a further contingent of school children from London. The Board have issued a circular, of which I am sending the hon. Member a copy, emphasising the continued importance of the evacuation scheme and urging authorities, through their teachers and otherwise, to adopt every means in their power to discourage the return of evacuated children to their homes.

Vice-Admiral Taylor: Having regard to the national importance of the evacuation of children, could it not be made compulsory that they should remain where they are?

Mr. Lindsay: That raises another question.

Mr. Attlee: Is the Minister aware of the great anxiety of the parents whose children are now in London that provision should be made for education?

Mr. Lindsay: We have issued a circular suggesting certain lines which can be adopted in the evacuated areas, and I am glad to say that London has already been adopting them.

Sir Herbert Williams: Can the Minister give any reason why children in London should not be educated?

AIR-RAID SHELTERS.

Sir Percy Hurd: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it is still the Government's policy that there shall be no household shelters on sale in highly vulnerable areas until the free distribution is completed in areas which arc in little or no danger?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security (Mr. Lennox Boyd): The distribution of free domestic shelters by the Government is being made to those areas which are regarded as vulnerable and have, accordingly, been specified for shelter purposes under the Civil Defence Act; and my hon. Friend is also under a misapprehension in suggesting that we propose to wait until that distribution is completed before putting shelters on sale. The position as regards the distribution of shelters for purchase was fully set out by my right hon. Friend in answer to questions by the hon. Members for Romford (Mr. Parker) and Lewisham, West (Mr. Brooke) on 1st August and 26th September respectively, to which I would refer my hon. Friend.

Mr. G. Griffiths: The Minister did not see many of these shelters in Yorkshire the other day, did he?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: A very considerable number.

Mr. Griffiths: Not in our place.

DAGENHAM (COMMITTEE EXPENSES).

Mr. R. Gibson (for Mr. Parker): asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that, although the borough of Dagenham is not a scheme-making authority for air-raid precautions general schemes, it carries out the scheme for the borough as the agent of the county council and has full responsibility for fire-

precaution schemes and evacuation; that it has set up an emergency committee of three to perform these functions; and whether authority can be given to pay the expenses and loss of wages which membership of this committee entails?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Healthy (Miss Horsbrugh): I do not think the circumstances are such as to justify such an enlargement of the statutory provisions governing the payment of expenses and other allowances to members of local authorities as the hon. Member suggests.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY.

TERRITORIALS, GREENOCK.

Mr. R. Gibson: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware the certain Territorials at Greenock have to pay omnibus fares of threepence each four times per day out of a weekly pay of 14s.; and whether he will take steps to have this hardship remedied?

Sir V. Warrender: I am making inquiries, and will write to the hon. and learned Member in due course.

Mr. Gibson: Is the weekly pay of Territorials intended to cover an allowance for travelling expenses?

Sir V. Warrender: No, Sir, but I will let the hon. and learned Gentleman have all the particulars.

Mr. Gibson: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that certain Territorials at Greenock have not yet received payment of this year's camp bounty; and whether he will take steps to have this payment made forthwith?

Sir V. Warrender: I am not clear whether the hon. and learned Member is referring to men who have fulfilled the full requirement of camp attendance and drills under the regulations for earning the proficiency grant. If so, I shall be glad to have particulars of any cases within his knowledge, and I will have inquiries made at once. There are cases of men who attended camp but had not performed the number of drills required to qualify for the grant by the time they were embodied. The question of the payment to be made in these cases is under consideration.

Mr. Gibson: Is the Minister aware that in the cases covered by the question the


bounty has been earned, but payment is being withheld until the men are at some distance from their homes, and that the intention is to make people pay their travelling expenses to their homes? Is that practice sanctioned by the Department?

Sir V. Warrender: I would rather the hon. and learned Gentleman submitted cases to me so that I could go into them with him.

RECRUITMENT.

Mr. R. Gibson: asked the Secretary of State for War what steps he proposes to take to allow men who have lost their jobs and are without hope of receiving employment, but who are anxious to enter His Majesty's Forces, to enlist in the Army; and what modifications he proposes to make in the system of recruitment?

Sir V. Warrender: My right hon. Friend will deal with this matter in the course of his statement on Thursday next.

ANTI-AIRCRAFT STATIONS, LONDON (INSPECTORS).

Mr. R. Gibson (for Mr. Parker): asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that in order to drive inspectors round the anti-aircraft stations in London cars are hired from a West-End firm at 30s. a day; and whether, in the interests of national economy, he will arrange that either these inspectors drive themselves in their own cars or hire less expensive vehicles of which a large number are now available?

Sir V. Warrender: Cars are now being provided by impressment, and these hirings will cease.

FRANCE (BRITISH TRAVELLERS).

Brigadier-General Spears: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will give instructions to the censorship Department that the practice of confiscating British newspapers and books in the possession of travellers to France should cease, especially in the case of newspapers which are on sale on French bookstalls?

Sir V. Warrender: Newspapers or books can be used as a means of conveying information, and to allow them to be taken out of the country by hand would be to allow an evasion of the censorship.

Brigadier-General Spears: Surely some means can be found where people can take with them books and papers that they are actually reading? What difference can it make?

Sir V. Warrender: If my hon. and gallant Friend will advise me of any particular difficulty I will certainly consider it.

ECONOMIC CO-ORDINATION.

Mr. Denman: asked the Prime Minister (1) what authority has been appointed for the economic planning of the nation's war efforts, including such aspects as finance, supply of commodities, economic warfare, and stimulus of exports;
(2) whether it is proposed to set up a body to plan the economic war efforts of the Allies?

The Prime Minister: As the reply to these questions is rather long, I propose, with the permission of the House, to make a statement at the end of questions.

Later—

The Prime Minister: The responsibility for co-ordination of all branches of the nation's war effort in whatever sphere rests of course with the War Cabinet as a whole. In practice the method adopted is to effect the solution of particular problems by means of consultation between the Ministers concerned, and in order that the results may be brought before the War Cabinet, some member of the Cabinet is entrusted with the general direction of these consultations.
In the case of economic and financial policy a Committee has been set up, under the chairmanship of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, composed of the Ministers concerned with the various aspects of the subject. The duty of this Committee is to keep under review and to coordinate the working of Deparements in relation to the economic effort of the country as a whole. This Committee is also responsible for supervising the arrangements which have been made for Anglo-French economic co-operation.
Lord Stamp has been asked to assist this Committee by becoming Adviser on Economic Co-ordination. Assisted by Mr. Henry Clay and Mr. H. D. Henderson, Lord Stamp had for some time prior to the outbreak of war been advising


upon the economic war plans of the Government, giving guidance and assistance to the Departments concerned. In association with the Ministerial Committee to which I have just referred, he will continue to review our current economic plans and activities in order to propose to the Minister or Ministers concerned ways of filling any gaps that may be found to exist or remedies for any inconsistencies that may be discovered.
There has also been set up under the Ministerial Committee an inter-Departmental Committee of officials composed of the permanent heads of the Departments concerned. Lord Stamp will be President of this official Committee.
As regards Anglo-French economic cooperation, arrangements already exist for discussion between representatives of the two Governments on many common problems. Further arrangements are under consideration with a view to establishing the requisite degree of consultation, as well as the means for joint action.

Mr. Denman: In view of the fact that our economic effort obviously needs concerted direction and drive, will Lord Stamp be a whole-time worker, or is there anyone who will be a whole-time director of these activities?

The Prime Minister: I do not think that Lord Stamp will be a whole-time worker, but he will be able to give a very large part of his time to this work.

Mr. Shinwell: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that our economic activities may prove to be the most fundamental of all our lines of defence, and that there is essential need for the effective co-ordination of all our economic activities, including finance, supply, mobilisation of labour, of exports and of imports and the like; and would not he reconsider the whole matter, and, instead of appointing a very large number of committees, with voluntary assistance, appoint some member of the War Cabinet who would actively function in all these matters?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir; I do not think that it would be possible for any single individual to function without consultation with the Ministers who are responsible for the Departments concerned, and it is because we do realise

the importance of the whole subject that we have set up this Committee, which we believe will be the most effective way of dealing with them.

Mr. Shinwell: While I appreciate the need for consultation and for active liaison between the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Labour and the like, does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that to have someone directly responsible not only to the War Cabinet but to this House and to the country for the co-ordination of all these activities is much better than the establishment of a large number of committees?

The Prime Minister: I do not know why the hon. Member says "a large number of committees." I mentioned a ministerial committee and an inter-departmental committee, and I do not think that we could do without either of these. As for the general responsibility to the House and to the country, it must rest on the War Cabinet as a whole, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to act as chairman of this Committee, and he will be the individual Member of the War Cabinet who will be specially responsible.

Mr. Attlee: Would it not be better to have some Minister who could give his whole time to this economic question, and not to have part-time attention given to it by one who, I should have thought, has quite a big enough job already?

The Prime Minister: It is very difficult for me to meet all these different points of view. One point of view which has been urged upon me—I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman himself has not taken part in the suggestion—was that the War Cabinet ought to be made smaller than it is at present. I do not see how it could be made smaller if you added more members?

Mr. Lees-Smith: Will Lord Stamp have any staff or will the work be done in his own time?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir; he will have the secretarial staff of the Cabinet available.

Commander Locker-Lampson: Will any Member of Parliament be allowed to sit on this committee?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. The members are all Members of Parliament in one House or the other.

Sir P. Harris: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider making use of some economist, other than those named, particularly those who had very extended experience during the last war, and who, if used in these days, could give the Government the benefit of all the experience they obtained during those four critical years?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir; we are anxious to take advantage of the experience of anybody who can help, and I do not think that the arrangement I have suggested will exclude that.

Commander Locker-Lampson: Do I understand that back benchers who are not in the Government will be called in?

The Prime Minister: I am obliged to my hon. and gallant Friend. I shall be glad to accept any assistance that can be given.

Mr. Attlee: In view of the statement which has been made by the Prime Minister, we shall take an early opportunity of raising the whole question of the economic direction of the war.

OFFICIAL STATEMENTS (NEWSPAPERS).

Mr. Lipson: asked the Prime Minister whether he will assist provincial evening newspapers, which have to go to press earlier owing to difficulties of night distribution, by arranging to advance, where possible, the time at which important official statements are made?

The Prime Minister: Under the new arrangements every effort wil be made to issue material as speedily as possible.

Mr. Lipson: If my right hon. Friend is considering in future the question of earlier sittings of this House, is this one of the factors that he will bear in mind?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

GARAGE BUSINESSES.

Mr. Paling: asked the Minister of Supply whether, in view of the large

number of garages throughout the country now rendered idle through petrol rationing and other causes, he proposes to make any use of the man-power and machines now available for service in supplying the needs of the country?

The Minister of Supply (Mr. Burgin): I am aware of the position, and have already received details of a large number of garages with men and machinery available for alternative work. The question of the best use to be made of this capacity is being considered at the moment, and I hope to be able to make an announcement in the near future.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Would my right hon. Friend consider also the use of the great number of large buildings which are now vacant and might be useful?

Mr. Burgin: Yes, Sir. That is quite another question, but I will look at it, of course.

WOOL CONTROL (SCOTLAND).

Mr. Erskine Hill: asked the Minister of Supply whether he is now in a position to make a statement regarding the control of wool prices in Scotland?

Mr. Burgin: Maximum prices for Scottish and other types of wool were fixed in the Control of Wool (Amendment) Order made on 5th September, and dealings in wool may, under the Control of Wool (Amendment) (No. 2) Order, take place under licence. It is hoped to be able to take further steps in regard to wool control in the near future. As stated in an answer to the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) on 28th September, further consultation with the Scottish Federation of Wool Brokers and Merchants will take place before such steps are taken.

Mr. Erskine Hill: Does my right hon. Friend realise the great hardship which is being caused at present, as it is impossible to deal with the wool market in Scotland; and will he, so far as he can, expedite the decision in regard to the fixing of prices?

Mr. Burgin: Yes, Sir. The price of wool is a question of the price of only one commodity. The whole question of the prices of commodities is receiving my attention.

POLAND (BRITISH CASH CREDIT).

Mr. Ede: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what amount of credit furnished by His Majesty's Government to the Polish Government was used by the latter?

Captain Crookshank: The amount of the cash credit of £5,000,000 used by the Polish Government up to the present is £294,250.

DEATH DUTIES (NATIONAL SERVICE).

Mr. Foot: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will introduce legislation similar to Section 29 of the Finance Act, 1917, whereby the statutory provisions for remission of death duties on the estates of soldiers and sailors killed in war are extended to cover the case of a master or a member of the crew of a ship or fishing boat dying from causes arising out of the operations of the war?

Captain Crookshank: My right hon. friend is ready to agree in principle that legislation on the lines of Section 29 of the Finance Act, 1917, should be introduced to deal with the cases of the Mercantile Marine and fishermen, and he would propose to include provision accordingly in next year's Finance Bill.

Mr. Foot: Would it not be difficult in next year's Finance Bill to make the legislation retrospective? Would it not be better to bring in a simple one-clause Bill covering the matter now, as there are bound to be cases arising between now and next spring?

Captain Crookshank: I think it would be difficult only if the House did not approve, and I should imagine that it would have universal approval.

Mr. Foot: In that case, would the Government consider introducing legislation on these lines, which would have universal approval, before the Finance Bill?

Captain Crookshank: I do not think it would be necessary. I dare say that any such cases could be delayed pending a final settlement.

Mr. Charles Williams: Would it not be possible to deal with this in a one-clause Bill now? Everyone would agree.

Mr. Foot: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will introduce

legislation extending the provisions of Section 14 of the Finance Act, 1900, as amended by subsequent Statutes, whereby Death Duties are remitted on the property of persons killed in war, to cover cases of Civil Defence volunteers who lose their lives in the performance of their Civil Defence duties?

Captain Crookshank: My right hon. Friend regrets that he cannot see his way to introduce legislation on the lines proposed.

TERRITORIAL FORCE BUILDINGS (RATING).

Mr. Ammon: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether the exemption from rating of buildings used by Territorials is now set aside and such buildings fall into the same category as those in the use of the Regular Army for which ex-gratia contributions are made to local rates?

Captain Crookshank: The exemption from rating of property, in the occupation of Territorial Associations prior to the war, is being maintained as was the case in the last war. On the other hand, where local authorities have lost rates owing to the requisitioning of rateable property for the present emergency the Government are prepared to give consideration to cases as they arise.

Mr. Ammon: Does that mean that buildings hitherto occupied by Territorials will, now that the Territorials have been embodied, be in the same category as those used by the Regular Army?

Captain Crookshank: Perhaps the hon. Member will read the reply. I think it is quite clear.

REQUISITIONED BUILDINGS (RATES).

Mr. Lipson: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that many local authorities are suffering great loss of rates in consequence of the requisitioning of important buildings in their areas; and will the Government make equivalent grants to these authorities to compensate them for this loss?

Captain Crookshank: I am aware that the position is as stated in the first part of the question. The Government pro-


pose to make appropriate grants to the local authorities concerned in cases where rates have ceased to be payable consequent upon the requisitioning of rateable property during the present emergency. The Treasury Valuer is giving consideration to cases as they arise, and is already in communication with several authorities.

Mr. Lipson: While thanking my right hon. and gallant Friend for his reply, may I ask whether that means that rates will be charged on buildings which have been requisitioned, even though they are not yet used for the purposes for which they were requisitioned?

Captain Crookshank: I would like to see the question on the Paper. Questions about rating are very technical. I have answered the question the hon. Member asked.

BILLETING ALLOWANCE (CIVIL SERVANTS).

Mr. Viant: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on what grounds the billeting allowance to Civil Servants is assumed to cover food and lodging, but is only assumed to cover lodgings in the case of school teachers?

Captain Crookshank: The position of the civil servant and that of the school teacher are not comparable, but the matter is being investigated.

Mr. Ede: When will the investigation be completed, and when will an announcement be made?

Captain Crookshank: I could not say.

ELECTRICITY (RATIONING).

Mr. Viant: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware that, as a result of the abolition of street lighting and the rationing of electricity, a large number of skilled and unskilled men are being dismissed by electricity undertakings; and whether the loss of these key men to the industry is receiving the consideration of his Department, with a view to its mitigation?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Bernays): I would refer the hon. Member to the

answer given by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour on 5th October to a similar question by the hon. Member for Plaistow (Mr. Thorne).

SEA FISH COMMISSION.

Mr. Garro Jones: asked the Minister of Agriculture what are the present functions of the Sea Fish Commission, especially in relation to the administration of war measures of control of the industry?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: It was not considered that the powers conferred on the White Fish Commission under the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1938, could be usefully exercised in time of war, and the activities of the Commission were accordingly brought to an end soon after the outbreak of war. The necessary Order suspending the powers conferred upon the Commission is now in preparation.

Mr. Garro Jones: Is their capacity to draw salaries also being brought to an end?

Sir R. Dorman-Smith: Yes, Sir.

CLOTHING (PRICES).

Mr. R. Gibson (for Mr. Parker): asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that excessive prices have been charged for clothing in Dagenham and district; and whether he will take immediate action to prevent such profiteering?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Major Lloyd George): My right hon. Friend has received complaints about the charging of excessive prices for clothing from various parts of the country, but if the hon. Member will send me particulars of the cases which he has in mind, I will have them investigated. With regard to the last part of the question, a Bill to deal with undue increases in prices of necessities is being presented to-day.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT.

WINTER ALLOWANCES.

Sir William Jenkins (for Sir Charles Edwards): asked the Minister of Labour whether, seeing that the prices of food and practically everything used in the


home is considerably increased, he will take steps to put into force at once the payment of winter allowances; and also whether, in consequence of these additional hardships, he will now withdraw the household means test?

Mr. Assheton: I would refer the hon. Member to the replies given to the hon. Members for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith) and Stoke (Mr. E. Smith) on 27th September and 5th October respectively. The answer to the second part of the hon. Member's question is in the negative.

BEDWAS.

Sir W. Jenkins (for Sir C. Edwards): asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that men living in the Bedwas, Monmouthshire, area are being sent to work elsewhere, whilst men from elsewhere are brought to Bedwas to work; and whether, seeing that this means inconvenience and hardship and also a reduction in wages owing to the cost of getting to and fro, the unnecessary use of vehicles, petrol, etc., he will take steps through the Labour Exchanges to put an end to this state of affairs?

Mr. Assheton: My right hon. Friend is making inquiries, and will write to the hon. Member as soon as possible.

GAS CONSUMPTION (RESTRICTION).

Sir G. Gibson (for Major Milner): asked the Minister of Supply whether he is satisfied that the restriction of gas consumption and production will not adversely affect the supply of by-products essential to munitions production; whether he is aware that scientific and other experts hold strong views that such lestriction may have serious consequences; and what consultations he has had on this subject?

Mr. Burgin: This matter has been receiving consideration. It is not thought that up to date the restriction has had any serious effect on munitions production. The position will be closely watched. As regards the second part of the question, I am aware of the views referred to and am in touch with the interests concerned.

Sir G. Gibson: Does not my right hon. Friend think that it is absurd that there

should be restrictions on the supply of gas resulting in a diminution of the production of very essential commodities for the production of munitions at a time when there is plenty of coal available?

Mr. Burgin: Yes, Sir; it would be if that effect were caused, but I have looked into the matter very closely, and, as I have already said in my answer, up to date the restrictions have not had a serious effect upon munitions production.

Sir H. Williams: Is it not the case that the restriction began only four days ago and is not yet in operation except where meters have been read, that not 1 per cent. of the people are subject to restriction, and, in these circumstances, how can my right hon. Friend tell the effect of something which has not happened?

Mr. Batey: Is there any need to start, either four days since or four days hence, such a restriction, seeing that it will restrict the production of coal, and that we have too many miners idle already without restricting the production of coal?

Mr. Thorne: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that a serious restriction in the consumption of gas means a reduction in the consumption of coal, and that that must have an effect on the production of the by-products?

Mr. Burgin: As I have told the House, I am watching the whole question of these by-products, not all of which are only made by distilling coal. I am watching the position very closely, and so far there has not been a serious effect on production.

Oral Answers to Questions — BILL PRESENTED.

PRICES OF GOODS BILL,

"to prevent the price of goods of such descriptions as may be specified by the Board of Trade being raised above a basic price for those goods by more than an amount referable to increases in certain specified expenses, and for purposes consequential thereon and incidental thereto," presented by Mr. Stanley; supported by the Attorney-General, the Lord Advocate and Major Lloyd George; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 278.]

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION (EMERGENCY) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

3.40 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education (Mr. Kenneth Lindsay): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
Three years ago this House gave assent to a Measure which provided for raising the school-leaving age from 14 to 15. That Measure came into operation on 1st September. The purpose of this small Bill is to suspend that provision. I little thought that it would fall to my lot to ask this House to suspend an Act which some of us have spent countless hours in helping to bring into force, and which had, with the good will of all parties, become known as the Education Act, 1936. We must, however, face the fact that in the evacuation areas and in most of the neutral areas schools are still closed, while in the reception areas, where schools are working a double-shift system or some other expedient, there is very great difficulty in providing the sort of education that was visualised between the ages of 11 and 15 when this Act was contemplated. Secondly, building programmes to meet the requirements of reorganisation are necessarily held up by the prior claims of the Service and Supply Departments for both labour and materials; and, thirdly, the procedure of giving exemptions, which at any time was a complicated procedure, could not possibly be worked at the present time. Representations have been made to us from many authorities, and I fear the exemptions would be given on a wholesale basis, thereby creating a very bad precedent for normal times. The Bill does not apply to those sections dealing with grants for voluntary schools. We feel that the best course is to review the whole position after the war. The Government will give sympathetic consideration to any legislation which may be necessary to meet cases which have failed to materialise owing to no fault either of the promoters, that is to say, the church authorities, or of the local authorities. I am glad to think that in another place the Archbishop agreed to this procedure.
I want to give one categorical assurance, that this Bill is a suspension and not a repeal of the Act. There can be no going back on that point. It is not easy to administer education to-day, but I should like the House to know that, in spite of these unprecedented times, there are in many parts of the country interesting experiments going on in the realm of health, in the realm of contact with the countryside and in the use of leisure time activities. We at the Board of Education are determined to profit by, indeed to exploit, that experience to the fullest extent. If compulsory schooling is to finish for the time being at the age of 14, we have done what we could to counteract what is, admittedly, a step back by setting up a new body called the National Youth Committee, whose declared object is to safeguard the interests, both educational and recreational, of our young workers between the ages of 14 and 18. That has been done immediately and, at any rate, it may help to remedy some of the conditions, particularly in the evacuation areas, during these days. I ask the House to pass the Bill because the hard facts demand it. If my speech is short, it is because there are no arguments beyond those hard facts which I could summon to my aid. For these reasons, I ask the House to pass the Bill unanimously.

3.45 p.m.

Mr. Lees-Smith: I and my hon. Friends very reluctantly agree not to oppose the Second Reading of the Bill. We accept the broad picture that the Parliamentary Secretary has painted. We recognise that our whole educational administration is disorganised and that the local education authorities have not the spare officials or the spare energy to work out the very troublesome Clauses as regards exemption for beneficial employment which make up the greater part of Sections 1 to 6 of the Act of 1936. While we accept the Second Reading, there are certain conditions which we wish to lay down in order to explain our action. In the first place, I attach great importance to certain sentences which the Parliamentary Secretary uttered, without which we should not have allowed the Second Reading to go unchallenged. Those words are important, because when one comes to deal with the question as to when the Act of 1936 is to be revived,


the Bill is very general and indeterminate in its language. It merely says that the Act
shall come into operation upon such date after the commencement of this Act as the Board of Education may by order determine.
The language of the Bill itself would not, therefore, give us the assurance that we require. Therefore, I noted and I repeat the statement that the Parliamentary Secretary has made, that this Bill is a suspension and not a repeal of the Act, and that there can be no going back on that point. I couple with that statement the statement made in another place by the President of the Board of Education, that the Bill is a suspension and not a repeal of the Act, and that there can be no question whatever of going back on the Act or failing to put it into effect as soon as circumstances permit. We regard those two statements as very binding pledges, and it is on the strength of them that we allow the Second Reading of the Bill to go unchallenged.
I also note the pledge which the Minister has given to the voluntary schools, that in those cases where they cannot by September, 1940, fulfil their obligations under the Act of 1936, owing to present circumstances, legislation will be introduced sympathetically considering their claims and that they shall not as a result be penalised in any way. I think it would have been better to have limited the Act in the first instance to a period of one year, after which we could have considered the subject afresh. By the end of a year the redistribution of the population will be complete and the measure of the air menace will have been taken, and we shall be settled down to what one might call war normality. In those circumstances, we might consider renewing the Act. There would have been no difficulty had we refrained from the policy of stabilising for the whole of the war a solution arrived at in a period of maximum dislocation.
There is one further point I wish to make which is, perhaps, the most important of all. I doubt whether at the end of the war it will be possible, without certain changes, to renew the original Act which was passed almost three years ago. One of the changes which we certainly wish to bring forward is to give some compensation to the children who are now at school for the dislocation of

their education, and one form which that compensation would take would be to clear away this clutter of exemptions for beneficial employment and make the Bill one for a clear-cut raising of the school age to 15. I venture to predict that at the end of this war, especially if it lasts more than a few months, this change will be made by more or less general assent. I predict that a war like this will greatly alter our perspective on the best way of teaching children of 14. This question of raising the school age is not one of detail but of perspective as to whether a child should remain at school or go into an industry.
Great changes are taking place. We know the result of the war must be the destruction of a proportion of our youth, and I do not believe there will be much opposition to the doctrine that under those conditions we should secure the maximum standard of quality for the youth that has to take its place. One can see this view growing as one looks at the Army now. Where should we be in the Army today without the quality we have produced by our present educational system? Look at it—a mass of mechanism. When I look at the boys from elementary schools who will in four months be completely trained as soldiers dealing with Bren guns, field guns, and tanks I ask what would our position be but for the standards of quality already produced even with the present school-leaving age? When the war is over there will be a general demand for a still higher quality, and we want an opportunity, when the time comes for the Bill to be renewed, of asking the House to consider these clauses for exemption from the point of view of post-war conditions.
We shall put down an Amendment, not for the purpose of deciding the question now, but to give ourselves a chance, at any rate, of discussing it when the Bill comes forward again. As the Bill is now framed there will be no chance of discussing it at all. The Board of Education will merely make an order and there will be an end to the matter; of course, the Order will repeat verbatim the Bill which was passed three years ago. I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that it is a reasonable proposal on our part that in allowing the passage of this Bill there should be an Amendment to give us the right to discuss that matter and get the decision of the House. I am


fairly confident that when the time comes the House will agree that we must have the maximum potential capacity of the youth which remains, and that that can be obtained better in a school.

3.55 p.m.

Sir Percy Harris: I cannot pretend that this Bill comes to me as a great surprise. One of the tragedies of the war is that many of the things we hold dear and for which we have been working for so many years are now being held up. Incidentally, house building and slum clearance are victims of the war. However, this question of raising the school age has been talked about so long and has been so long delayed that I am afraid I have become rather cynical, I will not say about seeing it come into operation in my lifetime, but seeing an Act of Parliament come into operation for some time. Many years ago the Fisher Act anticipated reform of this kind. In 1926 the Consultative Committee, under Sir Henry Hadow, recommended this reform as urgent and vital for our educational system. We had to wait until 1936 before it was translated into an Act of Parliament, and when it came the Act of Parliament was not a complete scheme. It was a very halfhearted proposal and in London, at any rate, I do not think more than 50 per cent. of the children could have had its advantage. Therefore, although I am rather disappointed and disheartened, I am not surprised. This much I will say: we are very glad that the Parliamentary Secretary has referred to the matter. This is a long overdue reform. We have been given a definite pledge, and although that sounds very nice, I shall not be happy and will not have complete confidence that this reform is to be carried through until I see it in actual operation and see the children in the schools getting the advantage of it and having the benefit of the extra year of education.
Incidentally, one cannot help commenting on one or two important points. Vast sums of money have been spent in making preparations for this reform. One of the main excuses for the delay and the fact that it was postponed for three years—the Act was passed in 1936 and did not come into operation until September of this year—was that it was necessary to make ready the buildings

to provide for the new school accommodation. Even before that time elaborate preparations were made for the new organisation so that there should be not only skilled teachers but the necessary appliances and equipment to justify this extra year. Consider the reorganisation in junior and senior schools for the introduction of secondary education; now, in October, 1939, we have a system of education whereby at the best in rural areas tens of thousands of children are going in only on half days, mostly in unsatisfactory buildings, and very often two or three classes are held in one room, and none of these great advantages, which we anticipated would come this year, are being obtained.
If education, as my right hon. Friend has said, is this good thing, if it is a national asset and is for the well-being of the nation, the losses of what is happening to-day must be immense, must be a big debit to the State's well-being and to the national wealth. I do think that the hon. Gentleman who so ably represents the Board of Education ought to give us some lead. One of the serious weaknesses of education to-day is that the partnership between the Board and the local authorities has largely broken down. The local authorities cannot be held responsible for education in a great part of this country in this year 1939. In the evacuated areas the authorities have available expensive buildings paid for by borrowed money which to-day is paying interest, they have an immense staff of teachers for which they are responsible, to which they are paying salaries and for which they provide superannuation funds. Of course, the Government are finding half the cost, but the bulk of those teachers are out of their control. In evacuated areas the teachers are scattered about the length and breadth of the land. I am not quite clear under whose control they are, whether or not they are still under the control of the authorities who are providing their salaries.
The same remark applies equally to the reception areas. They are not responsible for the education of the children in their areas. They are not getting the money from the rates to pay expenses; they are not even in control of the teachers. They are actually sacrificing valuable accommodation in their own areas, and country children have to make considerable sacrifices for the benefit of


their town brothers and sisters who are swamping their districts. I want, if I may, to claim the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary when I say that the education of the vast majority of children is now directly the Board's responsibility —more than ever it was before. The local authorities who find their share of the money are no longer able to be in full control, and of course the authorities where the children are located have really no responsibility for their well-being.
I think it is a very serious obstacle that the President of the Board of Education is not a Member of this House. I have always paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, but however able a Parliamentary Secretary he may be he is not a member of the Cabinet, he is not personally responsible, he is only a mouthpiece, although a very able mouthpiece. I think we are entitled to protest that at a critical time in the history of the country and of national education the President of the Board is not a Member of this House and has not to face the criticisms of representatives of the electors, who have to send their children to the nation's schools. I have nothing to say against the Noble Lord who presides over the Board. I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance, but I have no doubt he must be a very able and competent man or else he would not be a Member of the Government. I have, however, no reason to believe that he has any very special knowledge, except that acquired during the last two months, of the great system of elementary education that has been built up in this country. However the responsibility is his, and I do say that if we are to pass this Bill and hold up this reform, in the light of the critical position of the nation's education the Board should give a definite lead, a lead to local authorities, and make it clear that education is not to be paralysed at a time like this when it is so vital that the best training should be given to future generations, seeing that adults are risking their lives and that we have to look to the new generation to fill the gaps and to build up the State.
If it is bad for the children who are evacuated, it is three times worse for the children left behind, who to this day are running wild about the streets of our great towns. I think that the Parlia-

mentary Secretary has visited some of our working-class districts during the last few days. To-day, when the children should have been at school under the control of their teachers in our expensive school buildings, they are running about in the gutter and receiving no education, and they have no immediate prospect of receiving any education. In England alone, if we add up the contributions both of the taxpayer and the ratepayer, the cost of our education system is something like £100,000,000—a terrific figure. Is it really suggested now by the responsible Minister that the nation is getting good value for the money? The answer must be "No." We are paying the teachers and we are providing the buildings, but the teachers are not discharging their duties. That is through no fault of theirs but is because of the circumstances of the war. The buildings are empty, accumulating dust; they are in charge of caretakers and are not being put to any useful purpose.
The Board have a great responsibility in this matter. They come to us and ask for this concession. They ask us to relieve them of the obligation to provide education for children after the age of 14. If we are to give them this Bill we have a right to demand that the children who are willing to remain at school up to the age of 14 should at least have some education. I recognise the difficulties, but we have had a year to think about them. I was a member of a committee on evacuation which reported 12 months ago last July. Evacuation was no surprise. But the Government have no scheme, have brought out nothing either to give proper full-time education to the children who are evacuated or to provide education for the children who are left behind. I do not want to be unfair. It is easy to criticise in war-time, and I know the problems that any Government Department has to face in these days. But the problems must be faced. One of the difficulties is that local authorities hesitate to concentrate children in school buildings that are situated in danger zones. One of the obvious rules in dealing with air raids is to prevent the concentration of crowds. But even that difficulty, in the fight of our knowledge, is not insuperable. All these schools have playgrounds. During the last month, when Herr Hitler has been good enough to give us time to think, we


could have been building air-raid shelters under these playgrounds. I think it is true to say that in France something has been done to provide education. It is a grave charge against the Government if the only contribution they have to make to this difficult problem is to come here and ask the House to suspend an Act of Parliament which we passed so laboriously in recent years. If they have no proposals to bring before the House in the next few weeks we shall have some very harsh things to say about the Board of Education.

4.10 p.m.

Mr. R. Morgan: I am sure we shall all agree that it is a matter for extreme regret that we have to postpone the raising of the school age, but, at the same time, we agree that it is an essential thing to do. It is impossible for the Board of Education to go on with the proposal; there is no alternative. I hope I shall not be thought presumptuous, but the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), in criticising the Bill for postponing the raising of the school age, also indulged in the rather larger field of criticising some of the weaknesses of the evacuation scheme. I know a good deal about many of the problems which are concerned with that scheme, and I want to pay a tribute to the Board for the way in which they dealt with an extremely difficult problem. I think they must be congratulated on the success with which they carried it out. Of course there are difficulties and anomalies, which will right themselves in time. As to the Bill itself, I noticed the Noble Lord in another place said that it was a bad thing to throw on local authorities the invidious task of granting exemptions. On that point I fully agree with the right hon. Member who spoke for the Opposition. I hope that when the Act does come into operation the option of granting exemptions will have disappeared from it. I read in the "Times" on Friday, I think, that some local authorities in agricultural areas were granting exemptions at the age of 12. I do not know whether that is true, and perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give me a reply on the matter. I have not been able to verify it myself, but I am sure that however many and varied are the grave issues we have to face in time of war there can be no excuse for calling upon juvenile

labour in agriculture at the tender age of 12.
In his speech the Parliamentary Secretary referred to the National Youth Committee, a committee to look after those between the ages of 14 and 18. I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary is chairman on the committee and that he has taken several leading lights in the educational world to assist him. At the same time I do not see the names of any representatives of the teaching profession. I should have thought he would have welcomed the co-operation of one or more of the leading teachers' organisations, like the National Union of Teachers, representing as it does teachers in all types of schools, elementary, secondary and university. All those who are interested in this very vital question of education will regret that it has been necessary to introduce this Bill. At the same time, we see no alternative, and I shall support the Government in the matter.

4.14 p.m.

Mr. Amery: I think the whole House will agree with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke for the Opposition when he suggested that we ought to turn the regrettable necessity of the war into an opportunity for broadening and strengthening the whole system of our education when occasion offers. I remember that after the experience of the last war this House passed the greatest constructive educational Measure of the last generation, in the shape of the Fisher Act— perhaps I ought to say potentially the greatest constructive Measure, because, in fact, that Act has never been applied. It was a Measure to continue education up to the age of 18—an age to which all who can afford it would wish to give their children education—and it proposed to give that education in the spirit of an education, in part general, in part specialised and in part physical, to create the healthy, apt mind in a healthy body. We are all to be blamed for the fact that the Fisher Act has never been put into effect. Successive Governments have not given any strong impetus to apply it, and local authorities, to whom the matter was left, have not had the courage or the enterprise to attempt to face the initial difficulties involved in setting it to work, and I am afraid the industrialists of the country have not been far-sighted enough to realise the opportunities for co-operation


between industry and education, which might mean so much for the future of the nation. I think there is only one big borough in the whole of England, Rugby, an honourable exception in the whole of the country, which has put the Fisher Act into full effect.
I urge most strongly on the Parliamentary Secretary that, during this period, when he has an opportunity of considering our post-war scheme of education, he will survey the whole horizon and not merely consider the question of how far the restoration of the whole-time period is essential; that he will consider the far more important question of making education continuous to the verge of manhood and womanhood. Indeed, I think he should go further than study the question. The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) suggested that during this interval, when local authorities will be largely at sixes and sevens, when some of them are without the children to which they have been accustimed and others with far more children than usual, a far more direct opportunity is given to the Board of Education and to the Government to give a positive direction to the educational system of the country. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Mr. R. Morgan) spoke of the disaster it would be if children under the age of 14 failed to get education. I suggest that it would be more serious if the present generation who are now being taken into the Services, many of whom may never return, are to be succeeded by a generation of boys from 14 to 18 who have gone wild, and who have never had any real contact with what education can bring to them, whether as workers or as citizens. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will commend to his Noble Friend and to his Department the importance of treating this whole problem under the make-shift conditions, not in a make-shift spirit, but in a spirit of doing something that may, at any rate, be a valuable offset to what we may lose in the war.

4.21 p.m.

Mr. Creech Jones: I am certain that most hon. Members completely agree with the views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery). We all regret that circumstances have necessitated this Bill. It is

not that we had any great enthusiasm for the 1936 Act, for we all recognised that there were difficulties in its administration and that certain of its Sections mitigated against a genuine advance; but we hoped that certain results would come of it and that it would mark a step forward in the raising of the school-leaving age until the principle was accepted for universal application. While, as I have said, I had not any great enthusiasm for the 1936 Act, I regret that we now have to take this backward step. It has always seemed to me that, as a people, we have never appreciated to the full the importance of education in our national life. When there is war and talk of economy, it is always education that has to be sacrificed; to many it seems to be something of a luxury which in times of stress our children can do without.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook has recalled the considerable hopes that were expressed at the end of the last war, when most of us anticipated that there would be a big forward move in education. To-day, we recognise how small the advance has really been, and how disappointing the results have been. I am afraid that under this Bill, again, it will be the workers children who will be called upon to make sacrifices, and this will be largely because of the pressure of certain of the reactionary authorities, as well as the necessity for the employment of child labour in the present emergency. I hope that there will be, at the earliest possible moment, a revaluation of educational principles and a recognition that, in spite of the war, we ought not to go backward but ought to go forward with the improvement of our educational system.
The tragedy of all this is that the children pass along this way only once, and what they lose now they lose for ever. Instead of our regarding education as the natural heritage of all children, we are apt to regard it as something which they can have only if circumstances and finance enable it to be provided; but because education is so priceless to every one, and because if lost once it can never be recovered, we ought to make it one of the most important and vital items of expenditure in our national budget. There is the danger that when we postpone we may not be able quite to recreate the circumstances as they exist at the time of the postponement. There are


hopes expressed to-day that with the return of better times, we may be able to go forward again, but too often it happens that in the meantime we exhaust our resources, the circumstances are not sufficiently fortunate for the further advance to be made, and we continue to deprive those who ought to enjoy the advantages in question. Regrettable as this Bill is, I hope that it Is merely a temporary lapse, and that, as the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook said, we shall take a more comprehensive view of the needs of education in our country, and make our system more comprehensive; certainly the scandal of limiting our children in their right to education ought to be brought to an end at the earliest possible moment.

4.27 p.m.

Mr. Denman: Like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), I share memories of educational problems discussed in the House during the last war. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook did well to remind us that, in the course of the last war, we made one of the greatest educational advances of our time. It is, indeed, an inspiring example for the present President of the Board of Education and the Parliamentary Secretary. We all agree with the right hon. Member for Keighley that the necessity for this Bill is regrettable, but I hope we also agree that in circumstances as they are, it would have been a grave misfortune not to have it introduced. I concur entirely with the Parliamentary Secretary in his statement that to have allowed the system of exemptions for beneficial employment to come into force in the present conditions of chaos, in circumstances in which they could not possibly have been administered with any efficiency, would have been a permanent injury to our educational system.
The right hon. Member for Keighley expressed the hope that at the end of the war we would not go back to any exemptions, and he reverted to the old policy of the Labour party with regard to the school-leaving age. Whatever be the; precise point at which we fix the school-leaving age, I trust we shall not wholly throw over some system of exemptions for beneficial employment. During the Debates in Committee on the 1936

Bill, hon. Members opposite said that the exemption safeguards would never be administered and would be a dead letter. Personally, I was never so pessimistic, and in fact the Act was proving in many districts to work out even better than I had hoped. The really progressive education authorities were, for the first time, getting some real control over the entry of juveniles into industry and commerce. They were setting up standards of juvenile labour such as many people had been working for without the least prospect of success until the education authorities were given these powers. There was every prospect of a real advance, both in the direction of beneficial employment and part-time education, and also in the positive control of the hours and conditions of juvenile employment. This was a gain not only to those exempted, but a gain covering the whole region of juvenile employment. I am extremely glad that the Act will not be started under circumstances which would have made it impossible to administer the exemptions in the proper way.
Having said that, I would emphasise the warning given by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Mr. R. Morgan) to the Parliamentary Secretary about the dangers which will arise during the war, of the ineffective administration of the Education Acts as they are. My hon. Friend mentioned the case of a rural authority exempting children of the age of 12 from school in order that they might do agricultural work. I view that with concern. I suppose it is almost inevitable that, in regard to employment during war time, you cannot exact the same strict and rigid administration of the statutes as you can in peace time. During the last war we had something much worse than that. At the end of the war a Departmental Committee was set up, presided over by Sir Herbert Lewis. That committee reported that during the war there had been a substantial amount of exploitation of school-boys and schoolgirls in ways that had been injurious to the children. That is a danger against which the Board must continually be on their guard as the war proceeds and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will keep in mind that warning from our previous experiences. I join in welcoming this Bill which will, I am sure, have the unanimous support of the House.

4.33 p.m.

Major Owen: I do not wish to follow those who have already spoken, further than to say that I am in full agreement with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) regarding the Fisher Act of 1918. I have some cause to speak of that Act because the county which I have the honour to represent is one of the few whose education authority has adopted 15 as the school-leaving age. But here arises a difficulty as a result of the war. I have already drawn the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the fact that the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Air Ministry do not recognise 15 but 14 as the school-leaving age. The result is that men from my constituency and other places where the school-leaving age is 15, are not paid allowances in respect of any children between 14 and 15, although those children have to remain at school.
My experience of the local education authority which I know best, is that the number of exemptions is comparatively small. At any rate, I know of no exemptions of children under 14, and very few of those who have reached 14 years and three months or 14 years and six months or even 14 years and nine months have been exempted in my county. I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to give members of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force from constituencies such as mine, an assurance that they will not be placed in a worse position than the other members of the fighting forces who belong to areas where the school-leaving age is 14. It is not right or just that they should be placed in any worse position in the circumstances. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) spoke of progressive education authorities. I assume he would regard London as a progressive authority yet, despite the fact that the Fisher Act gave them power to put into operation school-leaving at 15, that authority has not followed the good example of the county which I have the honour to represent.

4.36 p.m.

Sir Annesley Somerville: We must all regret the necessity for this Bill, but at the same time we have to recognise that necessity. It would be impossible to organise the schools and the teaching of boys and girls up to the age of 15 in the present circumstances. This pause in

educational development will, I hope, afford an opportunity such as has been pleaded for by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), for taking a wide, comprehensive and intelligent view of our system. My right hon. Friend spoke of the small amount of recognition given to the Fisher Act, partly because employers did not see the opportunities which it afforded, and partly because the education authorities did not recognise those opportunities. But that Act did a great and good work, and in the continuation classes, so largely attended throughout the country, we see traces of its effects. The work of those classes is of the best kind. Those who attend them are boys and girls who are in earnest about getting educated and in that way they are getting the best kind of education.
After the Fisher Act we had the Hadow reforms. Those reforms have done a great deal. At the same time, they have left our general education too academic, and tending too much in the direction given by university requirements. The fact has not been recognised that not more than 10 or 12 per cent. of the pupils under our secondary system go to the universities. Then we had the Spens Report and if its main recommendations could have been carried out, in conjunction with the raising of the school-leaving age, we might have secured a. comprehensive and useful national system. That, however, has to wait. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) predicted that before long we should raise the school-leaving age with general consent. He pointed to the fact that, as regards recruiting, even as it is, those services in which a great deal of mechanical knowledge is required are receiving satisfactory recruits and he asked, in effect, if these results could be produced by the system now at our disposal for boys up to 14, what could we not hope for from a system which would train boys and girls up to the age of 15. It may be so, but not unless to a large extent the spirit of education is changed, not unless it pays more heed to practical necessities, connects our education more with realities, produces fewer black-coated youths, produces more boys and girls who would like to stay on the land, more boys and girls whose mechanical proclivities are developed. We want to develop all kinds—the black-coated ones


and also the mechanically minded ones. That is the task for the future.
The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) spoke of a very important matter, and that is the lack of responsibility of the local authorities for the children in their districts at the present time. That is a big task before the Board of Education. We have now thousands of evacuated children in districts practically without control. I do not blame the teachers, but we see this kind of thing happening, that teachers who are responsible for their pupils—

Mr. Speaker: The point before us is the Bill rather than the whole range of education.

Sir A. Somerville: I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I was just referring to what was said by the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green and drawing attention to the absence of control of the children who are evacuated. That is a matter for the closest cooperation between the Board of Education and the local education authorities. We regret the necessity for this Bill, but we hope that it may afford an opportunity for a wider consideration of our national system of education.

4.43 p.m.

Mr. Sexton: While I can understand the House agreeing with the postponement proposed by this Bill, we all hope that when the war is successfully won the reintroduction of a stronger Measure will ensure an extra year or two years for our elementary school children. The Fisher Act has been referred to in this Debate as an educational act of progress which was taken at the end of the last war. We to-day are not following the example of progress in education, but we are taking a retrograde step by passing this Measure. It has come from the other place to us. I wonder to how many children of the representatives of the other place, or of this place, this Act will apply. I remember reading during the Boer War about "Cook's son, duke's son, son of a belted earl." To how many cooks' sons will this postponement apply? Every one of them. To how many dukes' sons will it apply? Not one at all. We sometimes talk about equality of sacrifice, but this is just another example of inequality of sacri-

fice, because the children in the humble walks of life will be penalised by this Bill. These children have sacrificed enough. They and their forbears have been sacrificing all along the line. Even now these children have been sent away from one district to another, and they are sacrificing their education, often on account of the accommodation not being available in the various parts of the country to which they have gone, and some of them are getting practically no education at all.
In the vulnerable areas, as has been reported by several hon. Members to-day, there seems to be an end of elementary education, and to all their other sacrifices must be added this further sacrifice at what I call the shrine of shrivelling opportunity. We are waging a war against aggression, but let us be careful that the pupils of this country are not made the Poles of this country and suffer aggression in their education. They may not be the victims of actual physical aggression, but there is something which is equally bad, and that is mental aggression, and that will arise from the shortened period of their education. The reason for this is, as has been stated in some quarters, that these young children of 14 to 15 years of age will be able to find employment in the factories. We have often heard of their nimble fingers, but I would like to point out that those nimble fingers are guided and controlled by nimble wits, and those nimble wits are stunted and starved if their education is stopped at 14 or anything like that age. We hear much in these days about priorities and about lines of defence, but surely the mental Maginot line of defence—education—against the attacks of ignorance and the attacks of mass hysteria ought to be considered and not neglected, even in war time.
Often there has been talk in the country about the expense of the added year of education, that it will cost the country a great deal more. People who have poured out pounds on the education of their own sons—and I am not blaming them for it—would withhold pence from the education of the poorer classes of children, and the question that we have to ask ourselves is whether the premium that we have paid by giving them an added year or two years at school is worth


while. For the answer, look at the records of the response of youth to the country's call at this time. Go and see teeming multitudes of young people who have recognised their civic and national responsibilities in the workshops and in His Majesty's Forces. That is the answer to the critics of the expense of education. While agreeing to the postponement of this Measure, I repeat that we must insist that when the time comes a more comprehensive Measure shall be introduced which will allow the children to have that extended year or, better still, two years in the schools, on the physical side, on the technical side, and on the academic side. No longer must the children of the workers be kept in the vestibules of the temple of learning. No longer must they be allowed to grope about at the foot of Parnassus. They have the ability, but what they lack is the opportunity. While we on this side agree to this temporary postponement, we shall raise our voices time and again, when the opportunity comes, for a more comprehensive Measure even than that which was passed in 1936 to be put on the Statute Book.

4.49 p.m.

Mr. Loftus: I intervene for only a few moments to support the request made by the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvonshire (Major Owen) in regard to children in those areas where there is the 15 years age limit, that that age, 14 to 15, should be recognised for family allowance by the authorities of the three Forces. That brings me to this question. I take it that if an area such as that of the education authority to which I belong is touched—where we raised the school-leaving age to 15 some 15 or 16 years ago, if my memory serves me, though, of course, we have had very many exemptions—we shall continue as we were in spite of the repeal of this Act. I hope that that is the case, because we have completed the reorganisation for 80 per cent. of the area and have practically all our senior schools ready and in use. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) truly said that the standard of educational work done has raised the intellectual ability of recruits in the highly technical Army of to-day. That is one aspect of improved education, I agree, but I would like to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to another point.
We have heard much in this Debate about the results of evacuation. One occasionally hears of certain children, not mentally defective, who do not appear to have a proper grounding in such elementary things as reading, writing and arithmetic. One also hears rumours of recruiting officers receiving able-bodied young men who are not efficient in these subjects. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will use this period of lull to investigate into the question whether we are getting a thorough education up to the age of 14 in all areas. I suggest that he should take advantage of the evacuation of school children, and, by working in conjunction with the teachers in the reception areas. should get reports from those areas on the type and thoroughness of the education of the evacuated children. I hope that he will also get reports from the recruiting authorities on any educational defect which may appear. In this way we can utilise this regrettable lull to make sure that we get better results in the future than perhaps we have had in the past in some areas and in certain schools, so that we can make sure that, as we extend the age of education after the war, as all Members desire, the children will get a thorough grounding in the elements of education.

4.54 p.m.

Mr. Ede: My hon. Friends and I would like to join their views with those of the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Loftus) and the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvonshire (Major Owen) with regard to those children who are compelled to remain at school until 15 but are not allowed by the Services to rank for allowances when their fathers are serving with the Forces. It is an anomaly that ought to be removed because, had these children gone to secondary schools, they would have been recognised for these allowances up to a far later age. If they are in the schools compulsorily there is no reason why the Forces should attempt to escape the responsibility which they recognise for children in secondary schools. This Debate was to a large extent epitomised in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), a speech which we on this side welcome for its obvious sincerity and breadth of outlook. Surely the lessons of the last war add point to the warning of the right hon. Gentleman. During the last war,


when large numbers of men, far larger numbers than are yet with the Colours, were serving, there were troubles about discipline in the home and the street which we hope may be avoided on this occasion. We, therefore, welcome the appointment of the Committee to which the Parliamentary Secretary alluded, and we hope that it will do something to deal with that problem.
If this war is to be followed by what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook rightly described as a generation run wild, it may very well be that the real cost and disasters of the war will be felt and suffered, not during the war, but for many years after in the lives of these young people. It is, therefore, regrettable that the opportunity was lost in 1930£31, when my hon. Friends and I, with, I believe, the assistance outside the House of the Parliamentary Secretary, endeavoured to persuade this House and another place to enact the raising of the school-leaving age. Had we then succeeded this scheme would have been in such good working order that no suggestion of its postponement or annulment at the present time would have been brought forward. He and we were defeated, and we share with him the disappointment at seeing our hopes again delayed. We cannot, however, overlook the fact that war time will bring before us the problem of the discipline of the youth who has just left school. In such parts of the speech of the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir A. Somerville) as he was able to deliver outside the text of the Bill, he got on to one subject which is linked up with this. At the moment all the evening institutes to which he alluded, with few exceptions, arc closed down, and there are not opportunities for those children who have just left school to carry on their education and to get the mental and intellectual discipline that we must all recognise as being of more importance than usual at this time.
We hope that this Bill does not of necessity mean a postponement of the Measure for the whole period of the war, because I can see certain developments, if the war is prolonged, which might make it highly desirable for the school-leaving age to be raised in certain parts of the country, if not in all. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will not shut his mind to that possibility and that the Board will keep it under consideration.

I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), who had a patent of nobility conferred upon him by two hon. Members, probably because they recognised the thoroughly reactionary nature of his views on this occasion, expressed a good many fears about the present situation which I could not help feeling were largely misplaced. As far as I know, there is no doubt in the minds of the local education authorities as to who is employing the teachers and as to who is responsible for the supervision of the work now going on in the schools. One of the advantages of the present situation, deplorable as it is, has been the way in which it has been possible for evacuating and receiving authorities to co-operate in doing the best they can for the children in the various districts.

Mr. Dingle Foot: The hon. Member has referred to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), who is not at the moment in the House, and to the thoroughly reactionary nature of his views. The principal argument of my hon. Friend was that an arrangement should be made for the education of the children, particularly of those left in the evacuated areas, and that they should not be left running about with no education at all. I do not know whether the hon. Member regards that as a thoroughly reactionary view.

Mr. Ede: No, I do not, but I was alluding to that part of the speech during which we were deprived of the honour of the company of the junior Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot). He came in at a very late stage of the speech and, with his usual knowledge of what has gone on in his absence, has attempted to ride off on the part he did hear as an excuse for the part he did not hear. It seems to me that the part of the speech to which I was alluding was entirely mischief-making and that if it were not answered in this House it might lead to considerable difficulties between the receiving and the evacuating authorities.

Mr. Kingsley Griffith: The hon. Member has still not explained what was reactionary in the views of the hon. Baronet. I may say that I heard the whole of his speech.

Sir P. Harris: Of course there was nothing reactionary in it.

Mr. Foot: He would not have said so if you had been here.

Mr. Ede: That is a remark which the hon. Member for Dundee has no right to make. I am not in the habit of saying things in the absence of people that I do not say in their presence.

Sir P. Harris: Will you prove where it was reactionary?

Mr. Ede: I was referring to the part of the speech in which the hon. Baronet said nobody knew who was responsible for the teachers, that the evacuating authorities were not responsible for them and that the receiving authorities had no control over them. That could only lead to difficulties between the authorities.

Sir P. Harris: The hon. Member has made a charge against me. He knows that in educational matters I am not reactionary. Will he give me proof that I am reactionary? What is reactionary in my statement?

Mr. Ede: I say the whole of the statement to which I have alluded. The only practical effect of it must be to create difficulties between authorities who are now working under conditions of exceptional difficulties. It must lead to the triumph of just those forces in education which, I am sure, the hon. Baronet would not wish to see triumph. I believe that this evacuation of children will enable both groups of authorities to understand some of the difficulties with which the others have been faced.
With regard to the practical effects of this Measure, I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell me what will be the position of the schemes agreed between local authorities and the voluntary schools which will have to be brought to an end because there will not be either the money or the materials for carrying them through. The Church authorities will have incurred some expense for architects and in some cases, possibly, quantity surveyors. The local authorities have undertaken to provide not less than half nor more than three-quarters of the money so expended. Will they be allowed to pay their contributions towards these schemes, and if so will the Board recognise such payments for grant? The matter is really on a tripartite basis. The voluntary promoters pay a certain part and the education authority pay a part, and they expect to receive grants from the Board.

A good many of these schemes will have to be postponed until later, and we should like to know whether we shall get grants towards the expenditure already incurred.
Everyone on this side of the House shares the hope expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) that when the Act is revised the raising of the school-leaving age will be accomplished without any exemptions at all. We do not share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman). I think the time for the process he envisages comes in the year after the raising of the school-leaving age has been reached. I have always held that we should have the raising of the school-leaving age to 15 and exemptions in the year between 15 and 16 for those children who have secured employment in some occupation that could be recommended under some choice-of-employment or similar scheme, and that then would be brought into operation those Clauses of the Fisher Act to which the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook alluded. We want a clear-cut raising of the school-leaving age to 15, and in the circumstances which will immediately follow the war—if we are to regard the last war as any criterion— it should be easy, with a labour market which will have to absorb demobilised soldiers, to raise the school-leaving age to 15 without inflicting any hardship on the home, and beyond 15 the choice-of-employment scheme should then be brought into operation.

Mr. Denman: I believe the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) and I are in entire agreement. My sole point was that after the moment when the school-leaving age sets a boy loose there should still be compulsory part-time education.

Mr. Ede: I do not think there is anything between us, except that I do not think the hon. Member quite envisaged as long a period as I have. I am glad to find that we are in agreement and that past associations have done the hon. Member some good. We on this side regret this Measure, but if in the long run it enables us to live up to the ideas that have been expressed so vocally this afternoon, curiously by two hon. Members on the other side, it may be that we shall not regret the period of delay we may have to endure.

5.8 p.m.

Mr. Lindsay: This has been an interesting Debate, because it has produced one or two speeches which, while not absolutely related to the postponement of the school-leaving age, have raised the general outlook for education itself. I made my speech extremely short, because nobody could be more depressed than I am over this Measure. I spent three years of my life, 14 years ago, in writing a book trying to stir people to a realisation of the importance of raising the school-leaving age, and, therefore, it is not a very pleasant thing to stand here to-day and ask for its suspension, but, still there are compensations. I should like to make one or two very small points relating to the speeches of the right hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) and the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones)—and rather more so to that of the hon. Member for Shipley—and to a certain extent that of the right hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris). I want to make it perfectly clear that this Measure has nothing to do with finance or reactionary authorities; in fact, in many cases the most progressive authorities have come and asked for it; nor has the Board any more control than it has ever had. This Measure has been asked for by all parties and by the authorities, but I do not think we need go into that.
With regard to the point put forward by the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Mr. R. Morgan) and the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman), I think I know to what they are referring. It relates to certain conditions in the Isle of Ely and Bedfordshire. Personally I agree with them. With regard to what was said by the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvonshire (Major Owen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Loftus), reinforced by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), relating to places where the school-leaving age is raised to 15 and the incidence of the allowances in reference to the Army, Navy and Air Force, I have already discussed this matter and it is in process of negotiation in the office. I will let hon. Members know the result as soon as possible.
This raises a further point to which reference has also been made. We were asked whether we would use this time to make the most of education up to 14

years of age. In my opening remarks I gave the House a hint that that is already being done. I could, if this were the time to do so, tell the House, not of the number of children whom we have helped, but of some fascinating experiments which are already in being in different parts of the countryside where it would seem the children are not only happy but have no desire at all to return, and of experiments conducted by teachers in the schools. One of these came to my notice this morning where the whole dietary of a group of children in Surrey is being planned; fruit and vegetables on a scale never seen before locally are going to the people billeted in a house in Surrey. There are many other experiments. We propose to exploit the situation to the full and to make the most of this period. In regard to the point made in the opening speech of the right hon. Member who spoke for the Opposition, we would like to have any Amendment which hon. Gentlemen care to bring forward to this Bill.
I would like to finish on the point raised in the very interesting speech made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), and followed by other speakers. It gives me an opportunity to make a brief statement in reply to the right hon. Gentleman. Realising what happened in the last war we got busy quickly. We brought together a small group of people. I think this was properly done through the Board of Education, where the responsibility should be. We were backed by Sir Percival Sharp and Mr. Charles Robertson, Chairman of the London County Council Education Committee, by the juvenile organisations, through the chairman and vice-chairman of their joint committee, and by others like Sir Wyndham Deedes and Lord Aberdare, lately Chairman of the National Fitness Council, and the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall), whose knowledge of these problems, both in Wales and other areas, reinforces the committee. There were one or two advisers on medical and industrial questions, such as Lord Dawson of Penn and Sir David Milne-Watson. I think that this constitutes the entire committee.
The committee took the view that, if we have to close down at 14 years of age, we want to see that the partnership


between education authorities and the excellent juvenile organisation throughout the country is made much more efficient and given a little more central drive and guidance. We believe that this can come best from the place where education resides. It is not generally known that a vast amount of work is going on, particularly in London, in the evening institutes and elsewhere, of an entirely recreational kind and not in the old form of class work. It is hoped that the committee may be the forerunner of something much bigger and much nearer what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook mentioned. I wish we could have had it years ago in the continuation schools of this country, but I see the germ of it in the work which we hope to do on this committee. It is no use sending round circulars; we have to go to the authorities themselves and make them realise that the ages from 14 to 18 are just as important as from 11 to 14.
Unless a more romantic and challenging view is given to the young people in this country, and more chances during those years, then we shall have a recurrence of delinquency and all the problems which have been referred to by hon. Members much older than I am. I was in the war and not here, but I know that those things happened. The committee reports of that time are eloquent of what happened. At any rate, we have started in the first month of the war and not after two years, and I hope that, as we have to postpone raising the school-leaving age, we can, at any rate, take steps to keep open the evening institutes and the clubs, and perhaps build up a new partnership, which has hitherto not existed, between the local education authorities and the juvenile organisations in order to look after the education and recreation of our young people.

5.17 p.m.

Mr. MacLaren: Whatever is done as the result of the Debate to-day I hope it will not intensify the desire of some of those in the educational circles of this country to enforce what is called discipline. If there is anything which I hate and detest it is young people being got hold of and disciplined, with the result that they grow up more headstrong than if they had been left entirely alone without any of that kind of education at all.

Freedom and liberty to develop the personality are crushed when discipline is administered with an iron hand. There is apparently a certain amount of adversity in relation to the evacuation of the children, but there is also a glorious opportunity of divorcing them from the horrible circumstances in which they have lived. I was delighted to hear the Minister say that some of the children will not go back to the areas from which they came—[Interruption]—well, he said they did not want to go back, and that is the same thing. That happens when they get into the country areas.
There is another thing of which I hope the Minister and those with him will do their best to take advantage. If there is anything which is notorious it is the failure of modern so-called education. We are producing masses of people who are utterly incapable of reason. The speeches in this House are an example. In the countryside to which these children have now been taken they will come up against the practical work of country life. I hope that the schools will not be deemed to have fulfilled their function only during the few hours when the children are before the school teachers and that they will encourage practical experience of the everyday life of the country. I know of no better sphere in which you can teach children to reason from A to B. I hope that discipline will be subordinated, and that the other side of children's lives will be allowed to build itself up.
I was appalled to hear some of the sentiments expressed here to-day about discipline and making children more efficient for the Army when they grow up. They were not the views which were held in the early days of this movement. There is an opportunity to-day to give to many of the children a wider scope in the use of their hands and brains in the countryside, instead of their being, as too often heretofore, tied in the schools with books and crabbed-minded teachers; so that when they come out into the world, crammed with details that nobody wants, you find that, in spite of knowing all these details they cannot reason; from an ordinary premise which they themselves make they cannot make a deduction. I hope that the schoolteachers will take note of this Debate. It is the reasoning man that counts, not the learned man. I heard an old Catholic priest once say this, after listening to a


Disputant "The more I listen to that fellow, the more I think that if his premises are the smallpox, his deductions will catch the contagion."

Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to. Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow.—[Captain Waterhouse.]

EDUCATION (EMERGENCY) (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

5.22 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Captain McEwen): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
The provisions of this Bill are in substance the same as those of the corresponding Measure for England and Wales, which has just been given a Second Reading. The object is to postpone, to a date to be appointed by the Secretary of State, the operation of Part I of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1936, which raised the school-leaving age to 15 as from 1st September this year. A separate Bill is required for Scotland— a fact which, I think, will not be disputed by my hon. colleagues from Scotland— because the existing Acts relating to education are in a different form from those applicable to England and Wales. A great deal was said in the preceding Debate about the circumstances which make this necessary. There is the question of the evacuation of large numbers of school children from vulnerable areas, the question of the impossibility of providing for children between 14 and 15 the kind of education which should be provided if the extra year at school is to be profitable, and the question of the inability of education authorities to provide the extra accommodation which would be needed, together with the shortage of building labour and, more important still at the present time, of building material. There is also the question of the exemptions, for under existing conditions, exemptions would be bound to be granted very freely, and thereby a bad precedent would be set for normal times.
I should like to make clear one point which has already been emphasised by

my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. That is that this Bill is very far from being a repeal Measure merely masquerading in the guise of a postponement. It is the Government's firm intention to proceed with the raising of the school-leaving age at the first opportunity. There is nothing in this Bill to prevent a child remaining at school after the age of 14, just as he can at present should his parents so desire. It was urged this afternoon by the right hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) that, instead of suspending the raising of the age indefinitely until an appointed day, it would be better to suspend it for one year only, in order that the situation might then be reviewed. The answer is that if the Bill were amended in that way it would place education authorities in a very difficult position. They might, for example, feel bound to prepare for the raising of the age on 1st September, 1940, without the least certainty that the date would not again be postponed, and there would be a serious risk of waste of effort and of money.
I do not think it is necessary for me to go through the Bill Clause by Clause and make a detailed explanation, but I should like to mention two points. An important and relevant point arises on Clause 1, Sub-section (2). Education authorities have prepared for the raising of the school age and, in some cases at any rate, have incurred liabilities in consequence. As the Act of 1936 is to be deemed not to have come into operation there might be a doubt as to whether such expenditure was allowable or coverable. The Bill provides that such liabilities shall be deemed to have been lawfully incurred if they would have been incurred but for the postponement of the Bill. In Clause 2, which is the specifically Scottish Clause of the Bill, Sub-section (1) deals with Section 17 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, which, as amended by the Act of 1936, prohibits the employment in factories, workshops, mines or quarries of a child or young person under 15 years of age unless he is over 14 and has been granted an employment certificate. The Bill proposes that Section 17 shall not come into operation until the appointed day already referred to. Sub-section (2) deals with by-laws made by education authorities under Section 28 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland)


Act, 1937, for the purpose of regulating the employment of children. This Bill proposes that the by-laws relating to a school-leaving age of 15 shall be deemed not to have been made, and that the bylaws in operation immediately before 1st September, 1939, shall continue in force, but without prejudice to the power of the authority to make new by-laws.
In submitting the Bill for Second Reading, I would again emphasise that this educational step, which has been looked forward to by so many as a Measure long desired and greatly to be welcomed, is postponed only temporarily, and postponed owing to the exigencies of the time, which are only too apparent to us all. The principle of raising the school age has been already accepted, both by Parliament and the country. To that principle, due effect will be given as soon as circumstances permit.

5.29 p.m.

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: It is customary when a Member makes his first speech in the House for the Member who follows him to congratulate him upon his lucidity and to say that the House hopes to hear him on many future occasions. I believe I am right in saying that this is the first speech the hon. Gentleman has made as a Minister, and I offer my congratulations on his lucidity. I will not say that I hope we shall hear him often, but that I hope that we shall hear him again soon on the repeal of this Measure. In the course of our Budget Debate an hon. Member speaking from one of the back benches opposite said that he did not approve of the Budget, but he accepted it with deep resignation. I think that that has been the attitude of my colleagues who sit for English constituencies in regard to the sister Bill which we have carried through its Second Reading for England. I do not think that the Scottish constituencies would wish me to go even as far as that. They certainly do not approve of the Bill, but they recognise that force majeure compels them to allow it to pass.
Scottish people have always believed in education even more zealously than the people across the Border, and it was the hope and belief and intention of most of the Scottish education authorities to do their best to make the somewhat halfhearted Education Act of 1936 a real op-

portunity for progress in the matter of education. I will not go as far as to say that they intended to make use of it more liberally than the English education authorities, but I am sure they did intend as far as possible to enable the bulk of the children of the country to stay at school until they were 15. These authorities and large numbers of people in Scotland are profoundly shocked that it is thought necessary to apply the Guillotine to the school-leaving age and bring it down once more definitely to 14. They feel that during the war it is very unfortunate that the children of Scotland should not have the opportunity of obtaining experience and knowledge, and of widening their life in a way that a further year at school would have given.
Still more, looking into the future, to the years when the war is over, the younger generation in our countries are hoping for a brave new world. Some of us who can hardly call ourselves any longer the younger generation share that enthusiasm in spite of the illusions of the past and of the setbacks that previous wars have brought about. We look forward to this brave new world of the young, and we want the children who will then be men and women to be able to take a part that will be of benefit and encouragement to themselves and of strength, help and encouragement to the country as a whole. Every child whose education is curtailed loses to some extent the possibility of making the contribution that he or she could otherwise make. That is a matter of very great regret. It was said by an hon. Member in the Debate on the English Bill how much better it would have been if the clear-cut proposals which were brought in by the Labour Government in the years 1930 and 1931 to raise the school-leaving age had been carried. In these days—and it applies equally to Scotland as to England—if the proposal which the Government introduced in 1936 had been a simpler Bill we might not now have been postponing the subject for a time.
There are only two things more I would say in conclusion. The decision of the Government to-day may be a regrettable necessity, but I hope that so far as children under 14 are concerned in spite of all the difficulties that there are at the present time—and I know full well there


are difficulties in the evacuated areas where the Government are loth to open schools with danger still in existence— something more may be done. I hope that the Government are recognising the fact. In Edinburgh there are a very large number of people who think the dangers to children being allowed to run about the streets may be greater even than possibly the danger of being brought back to school. I know also, of course, the difficulties in the reception areas, where there are two shifts in the schools, a morning shift and an afternoon shift, and it is difficult to carry out the whole school curriculum, but I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland will do everything in his power to prevent these years being wasted years as far as the children are concerned. I hope that even if it involves considerable sacrifice and expenditure of time and money, the education of these little ones who are now within the school age will not be scamped because of the emergency of the time, for if that were done it would be a grave disaster to the country.
My final point is that I trust that these years that would have seen the working out of the early stages of the Government's Measure will also not be wasted in another sense. We had perforce to accept the limited Measure of 1936, believing that at the end of a few years at any rate it would have become the full-blooded up-to-15 retention of the children at school. I recognise that that might have taken at least two or three years to carry through. I hope that the war and the postponement of the operation of the half-hearted Act of 1936 will not mean the postponement of the full-blooded school age of 15. Lost as these years are as a half-way stage, I hope that the whole way up to 15 at any rate will come into effect not later than it would otherwise have done. The Government have given us promises to-day, but I hope that the new Parliament elected at the end of the war will be unlike the Parliament elected in December 1918 and will not be controlled by the type of men who were prepared to cut down the educational life of the nation in order to serve some of their own personal interests. If that be so, then, in spite of the step which many of us feel is regretted to-day, the final result may not be as bad as we might otherwise expect.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. G. A. Morrison: No one interested in Scottish education could have heard without the most profound regret the decision of His Majesty's Government to suspend the provisions of the 1936 Act, which secured an extended educational life for at least some part of the adolescent school population. One would like to know whether the decision of the Government was taken solely on consideration of English conditions, or whether Scotland was consulted, particularly the Scottish Education Department. All that we have heard from the Under-Secretary, and what has been said in the Debate on the English Bill, leaves me still marvelling and regretting that in the interests of a vitally important group of the population some policy of greater boldness and wider vision has not commended itself to our rulers. I say this in full consciousness of the national difficulties.
Those of us who for many years advocated the raising of the school-leaving age did so for many reasons, educational, moral and social. One reason particularly pertinent just now was that the extra year of education, valuable in itself, would be specially valuable in enabling more complete and effective post-qualifying courses to be planned and set up. This would also have provided a better and surer basis for the further education which must follow when school days are over. I shall refer later to the question of day continuation schools, already a generation overdue. The question is social as well as educational. The two things cannot be separated. Adolescents have suffered recently from the inevitable dislocation in business and industry. We hear that some of the junior instruction centres are to be closed down, and no new ones may be started by the local education authorities with grants from the Minister of Labour. Young people are faced with the collapse of the social institutions, statutory and voluntary, which would have been particularly valuable at this time.
One hears—we heard it in the English Debate—of the reappearance of disquieting symptoms in conduct, such as marred the later years of the last war. There is, in many quarters, the prospect of large numbers of young people being employed without any kind of provision for leisure activities. It is because of this that one


welcomes the announcement that a welfare committee or, as it has been described, a National Youth Committee, is being set up. One assumes that money will be available owing to the closing down of the National Fitness Council. I should like to ask whether the Scottish Members on the Committee are to have independent status as regards Scotland. Is it not an error that no one definitely representing the Scottish education authorities is included in the committee? Again, one welcomes the news of a special department at the Board of Education to deal with organisation and development and with administration of grant. I should like to ask whether a similar arrangement is in contemplation for Scotland. Are the proposed recreational classes to come after a full working day? Might not time be given during the day, and might it not be made a condition of employment of young people that a certain amount of time for recreation should be allowed during the hours of daylight?
Again, is the voluntary method adequate? What proportion is it expected to reach of the young workers? Is nothing definitely educational to be done for boys already 14 years of age or who will become 14 in war-time? In speaking in this House and elsewhere on the raising of the school age I have generally linked up that question with the question of further education, particularly of day continuation schools. This was referred to in an admirable little speech by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery). I should, however, like to go further than the right hon. Gentleman, and to put a question to my right hon. Friend. Suppose an education authority cared to set up day continuation classes in educational subjects, would it get a grant? If that is impossible as things stand now, might not power be taken to secure it? There should be no great difficulty in allowing young workers off for short periods each week. That has been proved. The value of such classes would be, in the first place, in what would be taught. I have a firm conviction that some kind of regular intellectual discipline would have a very salutary effect in steadying adolescents, both mentally and morally. I refer, for instance, to practice in expression, oral and written, to practice of arts and crafts, and systematic physical education. In

the second place, once the nucleus consisting of day education has been provided, it would be easier to organise recreational activities around these units.
I should like to quote the suggestion of, I think, the "New Statesman," that a strong educational advisory committee representing all branches and stages of education—for all are vitally concerned— should be set up to use every effort to prevent deterioration in the national system of education during war. I am concerned about what is to be put in the place of the provision now being suspended, for if we are merely to see something on which for nearly 25 years we have founded high hopes wiped out without anything really effective being put in its place, then I fear grave injury will have been done to young people, without any particular good to the nation.

5.47 p.m.

Mr. Foot: I rise to associate myself with what was said by the right hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) when he congratulated the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland on his first appearance in charge of a Government Bill. We can only regret that the occasion is not more fortunate. I should like to say for those sitting in this part of the House that we very much welcome the emphasis which the Under-Secretary laid on the announcement that the Government are not abandoning in any way the intention to raise the school-leaving age, but that they intend to proceed with the 1936 Act at the first opportunity. That assurance will give some gratification to those of us who thought that the 1936 Act came a great deal short of what it might have been.
I do not intend to go over what has been said by other speakers in this Debate or in the English debate as to the need for organising educational facilities in evacuation and reception areas; but in dealing with this Bill there is one question which I wish to put. The Under-Secretary referred to Clause 2 (2), that the by-laws made under the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act, 1937, which came into operation on the 1st September, before the date of the operation of this Act. That particular Section does not deal particularly with educational matters but it governs the conditions of employment of young persons. In par-


ticular, it provides that the education authorities may make by-laws in respect of the employment of children. They may prohibit absolutely the employment of children in any specified occupation. They may prescribe the age below which the children are not to be employed, the number of hours each day or each week on which they may be employed, the intervals to be allowed for meals, rest and so forth.
It is difficult to see why the conditions which prevail at the present time make it necessary to abrogate by-laws laying down conditions of this kind. I should have thought that those conditions for safeguarding the health and well-being of children employed in industry are as necessary now as ever they were. It may well be that no by-laws governing these particular matters have been made in the period of time referred to in the Bill. Quite obviously, it was not the intention of those who drafted the Bill to strike at by-laws of this kind, but if I am right in that assumption it is a little difficult to see why the Sub-section should be made quite as sweeping as this, and I think it would be useful to have an assurance from whichever Minister is going to reply that the operation of Clause 2 in its present form is not going to strike out useful and necessary by-laws of the kind I have mentioned.

5.51 p.m.

Mr. Robert Gibson: I would like to associate myself with the congratulatory remarks which have been passed on the able way in which the Secretary of State has presented this rather mournful subject. In approaching this Bill, one is struck with the wide discrepancy between the Title of the Bill and the contents of the Clauses. The Title is simple in its statement but is very comprehensive in its ambit, dealing as it does with the emergency in education in Scotland arising out of the war. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) intimated, education has always been a very important matter in Scotland. One might say with truth that education has always been one of the chief items of the stock-in-trade in Scotland and it has provided a large measure of the valuable exports from Scotland.
In meeting the emergency that has arisen from the war in education in

Scotland, one is entitled to pay a tribute to all concerned in the way that that emergency in its wide sense has been met. Local authorities, officials and teaching staffs have carried themselves valiantly and effectively in meeting that emergency. Private schools have done their part. By transferring teaching staffs and pupils to country houses an example has been set of which advantage may well be taken some time in the future by pupils and scholars who are less comfortably circumstanced. It is interesting to find how in a war emergency in our country certain schools have provided very materially from their former pupils towards our Government. In the War Cabinet in 1918 there were six former pupils of one of the Merchant Companies Schools in Edinburgh, George Watson's College. At present there are three Ministers who are former pupils of that school—the Home Secretary, the Minister of Agriculture and the Lord Advocate.
Speaking of the indebtedness of our country to the Merchant Companies Schools in Scotland, one may be pardoned for referring to a difficulty that has arisen at this time in connection with these schools. They have a great tradition and the scholastic foundations of the success and eminence of many of our Ministers from time to time are directly traceable to that source. The staffs of these schools have rendered, for that among other reasons, very great services. These schools have a tradition that has been and is being widely maintained, but it would appear that the Merchant Companies Education Committee is meeting serious difficulties, and I would suggest to the Secretary of State that in dealing with the emergency he might have these in mind, keeping also in view the real debt which the Government of this country owes to these schools. I understand that members of the staff of the Merchant Companies School are, in certain cases, losing their posts. That is most unfortunate, particularly in the case of women of middle age. They have the difficulty of finding other employment and there is also the difficulty that failure to get a teaching post within a year means that pension rights will be lost.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Dennis Herbert): That matter is outside the question which we are discussing.

Mr. Gibson: I do not desire to transgress your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I thought I was following the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Mr. Morrison) in dealing with difficulties, arising from the emergency, which were not exactly confined to the raising of the school age. I would point out that while the Under-Secretary of State narrated the causes which induced the Government to bring in this Bill postponing the raising of the school age, he mentioned evacuation, the question of accommodation and the shortage of building labour and material, but he did not suggest that there was any shortage of teaching staff.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I should have thought the hon. and learned Gentleman would have appreciated the latitude I allowed him in permitting him to proceed as far as he did. This is not a question which can be dealt with in considering this Bill.

Mr. Gibson: I do not desire to pursue the particular matter of the Merchant Companies School, but I submit it would be unfortunate if the war emergency in education in Scotland is aggravated by dismissals of teachers; that would not be a matter that would tend to assist the position in Scotland. Without pressing the matter any further, I wish to say that redundancy of teachers is never a proper ground for dismissing teaching staffs, and as a constructive method towards meeting that general question might I suggest that the Secretary of State should consider whether it would not be possible for teachers from one quarter to be loaned to local authorities in another area where there has been an addition to the number of pupils, so that either assistance would be given without there being any loss either to the individual or to the community by an unfortunate and avoidable increase of unemployment among teachers?

5.59 p.m.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I will detain the House for only a few moment's in order to emphasise one or two important matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for the Scottish Universities (Mr. G. A. Morrison). My hon. Friend speaks upon educational matters with authority which, I think, is recognised and respected in all parts of the House, and I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to answer the various pertinent ques-

tions which my hon. Friend has put to him. There are two questions in particular on which I think he ought to give a full answer, not only for the satisfaction of the House but for the satisfaction of Scotland. One of them concerns the results of evacuation. In evacuated areas the children are now running loose, there is little or no control of them and they are a source of considerable trouble and anxiety to their parents. I merely ask that my right hon. Friend will indicate to us that steps are now being taken to bring these children under the control of some kind of continous education and mental discipline. That seems to me most necessary and most urgent. In reception areas one knows case after case of overloaded schools and overloaded teachers. The position at present is anything but satisfactory in many rural areas. I would beg my right hon. Friend to give as full a reply as is possible, for great anxiety is being caused to teachers, parents and people interested in education in the rural areas.
We have entered upon what may be the greatest and the most terrible war in the history of the world. The young people of 14 and 15 and over who are affected by the Bill will for the next two or three years be growing up in awful conditions. They will be reading nothing in the Press but of wars and of fighting and of deaths and of wounds. The conversation of their parents at home will be concerned with these self-same terrible continuous subjects. There will be perhaps throughout all these years of war constant darkness during the winter, with curtailment of recreation and entertainment during the evenings. What is going to be the psychological effect upon those growing young people of these terrifying conditions? Those of us who have been through two wars now can understand something of that reaction. I was at school when the last war broke out. This time the pressure of conditions is going to be more terrible than ever before. In those circumstances I fel that those responsible for education must take special measures to counteract that deteriorating effect which is bound to result in all parts of the country and in all groups of society.
My hon. Friend has asked for day continuation schools. That may be one way and there may be others, but I feel that my right hon. Friend would be failing in his duty to the rising generation if he was


not able soon to indicate that special educational measures are being planned, and will quickly be carried out, to gather in this new generation, which in 10 or 20 years may be controlling the destinies of the land. The responsibility for the upbringing of that generation is a very heavy responsibility. My right hon. Friend, I am sure, would desire to satisfy all of us that our young brothers, may be our sons, will not be allowed to go to rot under the degrading conditions which this war is bound to bring about, but that their mental, physical and moral upbringing will be looked after with the greatest possible sympathy and attention by the State. That is my most earnest appeal. I know that my right hon. Friend is sympathetic but I ask him to assure the House on a matter which is giving great concern.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. Barr: I should like to refer to some of the corollaries and consequences which will follow on this Measure. I should like first to allude to the large waiting list of teachers who have never yet had permanent employment and have been looking forward to the day when the raising of the school age to 15 would call for their employment. On 1st August I put a question to the Secretary of State as to the numbers in Lanarkshire alone who had not yet secured permanent employment. The number was no less than 384. Of these some 59 were getting some kind of employment under other education authorities, not employment to which they could consider they had settled down because their desire was still for settlement with their own county. It was true also, the right hon. Gentleman told us, that some of the remainder had temporary employment; but there was that number in Lanarkshire alone on the waiting list who had not yet received permanent employment as teachers. If I trouble the House with the period of waiting of these intending teachers, I think it will be recognised as very serious indeed. Four completed their training in 1933; 10 in 1934; and 21 in 1935. When we come to 1936 we find that no fewer than 77 are still on the list; of those who completed in 1938, 92; and in 1939, 83. Those who completed within the last four years, even those who completed four years ago, are virtually untouched, and are still on the waiting list.
I consider that these are tragic figures. I do not know if you can meet them under the new conditions at all. There is still the question of the size of classes, which I hope in an administrative way will be taken into full consideration by the Department of Education, but I am not always sure that the Scottish Office regards as seriously as it should this large volume of unemployed teachers. I once put it to a former Secretary of State whether he did not think it rather serious that there should be all these waiting for for two, three or four years, and all the answer I got was that it was a matter of opinion. I am sure the present Secretary of State will not put me off with a reply of that kind.
I wish to emphasise the importance of the State doing something for these unemployed teachers. The State is responsible for those it trains for this high profession, and it has a responsibility for those who are spending all this time on the waiting list. I do not need to remind the Secretary of State that some of them are very highly qualified. Some of those who have been tarrying so long on the educational market have high distinctions, B.Sc. and honours degrees. And they are the sons and daughters, in most cases, of working people who have stinted themselves so that their sons and daughters might qualify for positions in this profession. We have always been proud of the sacrifices which Scottish parents are prepared to make so that their sons and daughters might have a university education, and qualify for one of the great professions. We have counted it as one of our true glories of our country, and as one of the finest pages in the annals of the poor. It is said that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," but this is hope broken for many of them, which makes the heart despair.
I should like next to call attention to the difference between the standards in Scotland and in England. As a token of the advancement of Scotland in education I would point out that already in the 1918 Act the age was virtually raised, although it has unfortunately not come into operation, to 15. Section 14 of that Act asserts that it is
a continuous obligation of every parent to provide efficient education for his children until they respectively attain the age of 15.
Unfortunately there was a later Section in that Act, Section 33, which gave power


to the Department of Education to name the day when any particular part of the Act would come into operation. I know that it reflects adversely on what I have said, it is not to the credit of Scotland, it does not bear out what I have said about education in Scotland, that through all the years up to 1936 the Act in this regard had never been put into operation.
May I say a word or two in regard to what fell from the Under-Secretary in his very clear exposition of Sub-section (1) of Section 2? The original Section 17 of the Act of 1918 was very definite:
No child or any person under the age of 15 years who is not exempted under the Education (Scotland) Act, 1901, from the obligation of attending school shall be employed in any factory or workshop to which the Factories and Workshops Act, 1901, applies.
And it was so in regard to mining, and to metalliferous mines. The Bill now provides that notwithstanding that this Section of the Act of 1918 may have been put into operation, it is to be brushed aside so that young people between the ages of 14 and 15 can now undertake work in factories and mines and metalliferous mines, contrary to the intention of the Act of 1918. That, I think, is a very serious thing.
Let me say a word in regard to what the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Mr. G. A. Morrison) said regarding the possibility of what may be called day education and continuation classes. When the Act of 1918 was passed I was a member of the School board of Glasgow, and we had great hopes of the continuation schools. Our hopes have been greatly disappointed. For one reason or another full advantage has not been taken by any means of these continuation classes. I prize what was said by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education when he was speaking on the English Bill, that the ages of 14 to 18 were quite as important as those from 11 to 14. He hinted that advantage would be taken in England of voluntary organisations and juvenile organisations, and I trust that something similar will be done in Scotland. I approve what has been said by the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities that in day schools a great deal may be done for these young people.
One thing more in regard to administration. The Act of 1936 brought some valuable changes in co-ordination. It co-ordinated what had been known as the Advance Division Schools with the secondary schools. Although that Act is not now to be in operation, I trust that in administration and other ways the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scottish Education Department will not tarry in putting into force some of the plans they have had for reaching that better coordination and understanding. The last thing I want to say is this. It was foreshadowed by the right hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith), that there might be some modification of this postponement, and I rather think the right hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) endorsed what was said. It was that we might go from year to year in this matter; and that if circumstances allow after a year, we might bring it into force earlier than what would appear from the Measure now before us. I trust that if anything of that kind is proposed, or any modification made for England, we in Scotland may have the earliest opportunity of putting the Act into full operation.
In education we cannot be stationary. We cannot think that we are merely going to postpone the operation of the Act and find that we are exactly where we were. If we are not gaining ground in education, we are losing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones) said, "We may never be able to recreate the old circumstances." I feel that when we are not going forward in education, in many ways we are going back. I remember reading, in an account of one of the early explorers of his attempts to get to the North Pole, how those who were with him, in an excursion across the ice, toiled painfully and walked four miles one day; but, when they took their bearings at night, they found that they were further South than they had been when they began. While they were walking northwards, the currents were bearing them southwards. I impress upon the Minister and the Scottish Education Department that they should be alert in this matter in order to counteract those currents that will drive us back when we are not able to go forward. I think the whole teaching world will agree that when you get the


evacuees together, you will not find that they are exactly where they were when the schools were closed. You will find that there is a great deal of ground that has to be recovered. You will find that they have been going backwards because of the circumstances. There are currents that will carry us backwards if we do not make strong efforts, even under the adverse conditions that have obtained and will obtain, now that we cannot put into operation the raising of the school-leaving age; and I trust that the Minister and the Department will, in every possible way, seek to prevent us from losing more ground than is absolutely necessary.

6.24 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Colville): As always when we discuss educational matters relating to Scotland, we have had an interesting Debate, a pleasant feature of which has been the congratulations and good wishes extended to my hon. and gallant Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who moved the Second Reading of this Bill. I also would like to extend my congratulations to him. In doing so, I recall that one of the first duties I had as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland three years ago was to wind up the Debate on the Second Reading of the Bill, the provisions of which we are now postponing. I remember that we had 13 days of discussion on the Bill, before it became an Act, in the Scottish Grand Committee. Therefore, it is with very great regret that, together with my hon. and gallant Friend, I have to ask the House to accept the Measure now before us. However, I think that the House generally, with one or two exceptions, recognises the real necessity which has driven us to introduce this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) described it as a regrettable necessity brought about by force majeure. We can regard it only in that light. We would never have brought it before the House if we had thought such a course avoidable.
My hon. Friend the Member for the Scottish Universities (Mr. G. A. Morrison), who asked me a number of questions—some of which I can answer now, but some of which I shall have to leave until later—said that in Scotland we are merely following England in this matter, and that because England de-

cided this Measure was necessary, we also took that decision, without consideration. That is not the case. The Scottish Education Department have had the matter under most careful consideration and have had discussions with representative bodies in Scotland. The teachers' organisations were consulted, but they did not think the step was necessary; frankly, they thought the postponement was not necessary. The cities were consulted and their views varied; some of them thought that the age could still be maintained as it is in the present Act, but all of them agreed that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to work the exemptions certificate machinery properly under war conditions. The counties, which are the reception areas to which a great number of children have gone, unanimously felt that it would not be possible to operate the provisions of the 1936 Act under such conditions. In these circumstances, apart from anything which our friends South of the Border have decided to do, I take full responsibility for this Bill. I do not think that we could do other than we are doing in making a postponement. Equally I give the firmest assurances that it is intended to be a postponement and not a cancellation, and that as soon as it is possible to restore the full provisions of the Act, I would wish, and the Government would wish, that they should be restored. Some hon. Members have expressed the hope that there will be not merely a restoration, but an improvement of the 1936 Act. That will be for the Government of the day to say at the time. No doubt we all grow wiser as we grow older. I am speaking of the Act which we are now postponing, and I say it is my desire that, as soon as possible, its provisions should again become operative.
Several hon. Members have expressed anxiety about the present state of affairs, and I hope I may be allowed for a few moments to develop what we are doing in that regard. If the school-leaving age is not to be raised, it makes it all the more urgent that we should be able to state that we are doing something valuable for the children who are at school and, through the National Youth Committee, for those who have passed school age. The conditions of war make school life very difficult and raise many problems for the education authorities. In the reception areas, almost all—I will not say all, because there may be exceptions


—almost all the schools are now open. In many of those areas, it is necessary for them to work in two shifts in order to get the children into the schools, but I am advised that in all the reception areas full schooling is now provided for the children. The second wave of evacuation is in progress. In Scotland, a further number of some 10,000 unaccompanied children have registered for evacuation— I do not think they will all go—and when that second wave is complete, I am going to have an inspection in the reception areas by His Majesty's inspectors of schools. I shall obtain from them a full report of what is being done and see whether any improvements in the work can be effected. In the neutral areas, the position is that the schools are reopening as they are able to provide the shelters which the air-raid precautions authorities consider necessary. There has been some difficulty owing to lack of materials but everything possible is being done to hasten on the opening of schools in the neutral areas.
In the evacuation areas schools providing a five-year secondary course may reopen, on condition that the locality in which the school is situated has no feature which makes it specially vulnerable and that any protection which the A.R.P. authorities think necessary is provided. It is also a condition that the parents are told that the attendance of the pupils is entirely within their discretion. Technical colleges and evening classes may reopen under similar conditions in the sending areas. As regards the smaller children, the teachers have made efforts to gather them into groups and to give them such education as is possible in the circumstances. We have made arrangements for the registration of these children either by attendance at the schools or by other methods. When this register of smaller children has been completed, I shall consider proposals with regard to their education. I recognise the urgency of the problem and will do my best to have it dealt with effectively. There are two opposite dangers against which we have to guard. One is the obvious danger of the concentration of large numbers of small children, in view of the possibility of air attack. The other is the danger to the future of the children themselves if they are allowed to run about without having anything to do. As

I say, when registration has been completed and when the details are before me, I hope to be able to make a further advance in the direction of securing schooling for smaller children.
The hon. Member for the Scottish Universities spoke of the National Youth Committee and asked about the formation of a United Kingdom body, rather than of separate English and Scottish bodies. This is a matter to which I have given close personal consideration. I think it wiser, under war conditions, to have a United Kingdom body, so that we can follow matters of policy closely through-out the United Kingdom. I say that that is the case under war conditions rather than under peace conditions but that is not to say that there will not be differences in the methods to be adopted. The Scottish members of the National Youth Committee are my hon. and gallant Friend the Under-Secretary, Mr. Wedder-burn, and Mr. Upton—now Lord Temple-town—and they will have direct access to me and can discuss with me any matter of particular importance to Scotland. Equally, they will be part of the United Kingdom body and will be able to keep an eye on United Kingdom policy. I considered the advisability of having a separate Scottish committee but decided that, at present, we would be wiser to form a part of the national committee, with as I say direct access by the Scottish members of that committee to myself and to the Scottish Departments. The hon. Member also asked why there was no representative of the Scottish Education authorities on the committee. In point of fact, Lord Templetown as a county councillor and a member of an education committee has had experience in this field and Mr. Wedderburn is widely known for his connection with the Scottish Council of Juvenile Organisations.
The hon. Member further asked a question about continuation classes. I am anxious that the work of these classes should be carried on and I hope that it will go on and will rank for grant. He mentioned some other points which I should like to follow up if I had more time, such as the provision of opportunities for recreation during daylight. I shall try to see what can be done in the direction of giving proper facilities for recreation under the present rather difficult conditions and I will communicate


with the hon. Member on that matter. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) raised the question of the by-laws which are mentioned in Clause 2 of the Bill. The position is that the by-laws which have been made with reference to a school-leaving age of 15 have to be cancelled, because the authorities will have no power under the Bill to regulate employment betwen the ages of 14 and 15. But the Bill revives all the by-laws which were in force before 31st August last and those by-laws contain all the valuable provisions to which the hon. Member referred, for regulating the employment of children under 14.
The hon. Member for Coatbridge (Mr. Barr) raised the question of Section 11 of the 1936 Act which made the advance divisions schools into the junior secondary departments. That Section remains in operation and will not be affected by the Bill. The hon. Member expressed anxiety about unemployment among teachers. I think the general position in that respect is not as bad in Scotland as a whole as he seemed to fear. Lanarkshire is the outstanding instance of a county with a number of unemployed teachers, but the advice I have is that, on the whole, the output from the training centres is just about sufficient to meet the demand. I intend, however, to keep an eye on the position, and I will do my best to alleviate any difficulty. Various other points have been raised but I would prefer to read the speeches of hon. Members in the OFFICIAL REPORT and to reply to any other questions which call for a reply. Let me, in conclusion, say formally and clearly that the Bill is only a postponement brought about by circumstances of which we are all well aware and it is a postponement that I shall be very happy indeed to bring to an end if I have the opportunity, on the first possible occasion.

Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House for To-morrow.—[Lieut.-Colonel Kerr.]

COURTS (EMERGENCY POWERS) (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords.]

Order for Second Reading read.

6.36 p.m.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland (Mr. J. S. Reid): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
When the present war became imminent, one of the first Acts of Parliament passed was the Courts (Emergency Powers) Act which received the Royal Assent on 1st September. It covered a variety of questions and gave the courts of both England and Scotland large discretion on a number of those questions. It was drawn with the technicalities of English law procedure chiefly in mind. It did, however, contain a Clause adapting it to Scotland and it is, at this moment, the law in Scotland but various difficulties have arisen. As the House is aware, while a considerable part of the law of Scotland is closely similar to, if not exactly the same as, the law of England, there are at least two respects in which there is a fundamental difference between the two. These are the land laws and the methods of procedure by which rights are enforced and it is in connection with those two chapters and particularly the latter, that difficulties have arisen. It has been found that the mere translation of English terms into their nearest Scottish equivalents is not going to work well. Not only does it produce inconvenience to the courts and the legal profession but there is considerable doubt on the exact meaning of the existing provisions in Scotland.
This Bill has been drafted to supersede the Courts (Emergency Powers) Act and also a small Act, the Possession of Mortgaged Land (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1939, as far as Scotland is concerned. The principles of the Bill are precisely the same as those which are to be found in the two Acts to which I have referred, and in certain respects the wording of the existing Acts has been copied exactly. In a number of other respects it has been necessary to approach the same goal by different routes, and Clauses have been redrafted in order to fit in with our Scottish procedure. I do not think that in those circumstances the House would desire me to go through this Bill Clause by Clause, and I will merely give the assurance that in so far as our differences in law and procedure permit,


the new Bill will do exactly the same as the existing Act, but it will be done in a better and a more straightforward way. I am not to be held as saying that there will be no differences, because the differences between our systems make that a rash thing to say, but in so far as we have been able to achieve it—and I think we have—our object is that the differences should be extremely slight. I therefore, in moving this Bill, merely say that its passage will facilitate the work of the courts in a most difficult chapter of their administration and will also greatly facilitate the work of the legal profession in Scotland.

6.42 p.m.

Mr. Mathers: I rise to say, very briefly, that I confirm what has been said by the Solicitor-General for Scotland, that this Bill will do precisely what the United Kingdom Bill, which was passed earlier in this emergency, was intended to do. We have often declaimed against legislation by reference, but we have struggled away with it, although under very great difficulties. Now we find that legislation by interpretation and translation is something that we cannot possibly work to at all, hence the reason for this Bill being interpreted into Scottish terms, although not perhaps into the Scottish language, that can be understood and properly applied by the legal profession in Scotland. It is not my intention to deal with the legal aspect of the Bill at all—I do not find myself competent to do that— but I have the assurance of those who are more competent than myself to say so that the objects aimed at are properly carried out by this Bill. I will leave the legal aspect to be dealt with by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Greenock (Mr. R. Gibson), who, apart from the fact of the office held by the Solicitor-General for Scotland, is, I think, the senior legal luminary in the Chamber at the moment, so that I think I can safely leave the legal considerations to him. The Solicitor-General for Scotland did say, what I thought was a rather significant thing, that the purposes which are intended to be served by the Bill are carried out here in a more straightforward way. What he was saying was in effect that they were being carried out in a more Scottish way; I think the two words are interchangeable.
I want to raise a point on this Bill in respect to a matter that is not covered by the terms of the Bill itself. This Bill, as we know, is to absolve individuals from non-payment of moneys and for failure to carry out certain obligations they have incurred. There are many obligations incurred by quite humble people that are not mentioned in this Bill. I refer in particular to the obligation on the part of individuals to pay insurance premiums. I have had a number of instances of this kind, and one notably only this week-end, brought to my attention, where premiums have been paid to an insurance company over a long number of years, and now, just on the eve of the fruition of those payments, just at the time when the benefit is almost coming about as the reward of those long years of payment, the people who have been paying those premiums find themselves unable, because of war conditions, to pay the last few premiums that are required. I wonder whether the Solicitor-General for Scotland or anyone else on the Government Front Bench can give us any indication whether this particular aspect of obligations that cannot be met because of war conditions has been looked at by the Government, and whether there is any intention to bring forward legislation to meet the undoubtedly serious position created for a large number of people by their inability to meet their obligations in this regard. It seems to me an appropriate thing for a Bill of this kind to cover and while I can hardly ask that this Bill be amended to the extent of including provisions of the kind that I have indicated, because this Bill is precisely to bring the Scottish position more correctly, more properly, and more suitably into line with the United Kingdom position that we decided upon early last month, I hope we can get some indication of the intention of the Government to meet the undoubtedly serious position to which I have drawn attention.
I am sure that in the minds of all of us there will be a keen desire that one part of this Bill will soon become operative. I refer to Sub-section (2) of Clause 4, which deals with the termination of the provisions that we are making in this Bill and which will mean that the end of the war has come and peace has been restored to this country. It is then to be declared that the emergency has


passed for which we are providing in this Bill, and I am sure that it is the heartfelt hope of everyone in this House that that time may come very speedily. I think that that time might come even more speedily if attention was given to the need, as I consider it, of making it clear what actually we are carrying on these hostilities for and what this country stands for in respect of war aims or peace terms, words which are practically interchangeable to my mind. I hope it will be realised, as it did not appear to be realised by the Prime Minister this afternoon in response to questions put to him, that there is a great need for making a statement of that kind at the earliest possible moment. I believe that that might help to make it possible for Sub-section (2) of Clause 4 of this Bill to become operative earlier than it might otherwise do, and, as I say, I believe it is the firm wish of all Members of this House that this Bill may not require to remain very long upon the Statute Book.

6.48 p.m.

Mr. Foot: I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers) on one of the most remarkable Parliamentary performances that I have ever heard. To be able on this Bill to make a speech on British war aims and yet to remain in order, was something that I should have thought would be outside the capacities of any of us, so that I do congratulate the hon. Member on having achieved it. I rise only to relieve the mind of the Government by saying that we too shall offer no opposition to this Bill, and to make one comment on the occasion for it. I hope that this will be a lesson to the Government, and that, as a result of their experience of the composite Bill and of the need for introducing this Bill, they will try to break this pernicious habit of bringing in a Bill that is couched in terms applying to England and of including a kind of translation Clause at the end to apply it to Scotland.

6.50 p.m.

Mr. R. Gibson: It is interesting to hear from the lips of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) testimony to the distinct difference that there is between the laws of Scotland and England. In that regard this Bill is an innovation. In the last war there were two Courts (Emergency Powers) Acts—the 1914 Act apply-

ing to the United Kingdom, and the 1916 Act applying to England and Ireland and only in part to Scotland. This Bill may be summed up as a Bill which has in view the legal enforcement of ascertained legal remedies, and it has to be borne in mind that the ordinary work of the courts goes on. The work of resolving legal difficulties and providing a remedy for legal wrongs continues. In that connection it is appropriate that one should call attention to the statement of the Lord Chancellor at the end of last month, when he informed the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales that their work was of national importance. That applies equally to Scotland. In these days, when decisions of the courts are of perhaps greater importance than usual, it is all the more desirable that law reporting should continue and that reports should be received by those who are interested in them. I congratulate the Lord Advocate on carrying into effect the promise which he gave as long ago as December, 1937, when I raised the question of supplying law reports to the inferior courts in Scotland. From time to time and as opportunity has presented itself I understand that these reports are being provided. During war-time in particular it is desirable that the decisions of the Supreme Court in Scotland should be made readily available to all inferior courts.
There are two topics on which I would like to touch. One is the question of insurance, which was dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers). I do not find in this Bill any specific reference to insurance, and there was no reference to it in the earlier Act. In the 1914 Act, however, there was a specific reference to insurance, and I would like to refer the Solicitor-General to Section I, Sub-section (1, b)of that Act, where it is laid down that:
From and after the passing of this Act no person shall …enforce the lapse of any policy of insurance to which this Sub-section applies.
Later, this provision is made:
This Sub-section applies to life or endowment policies for an amount not exceeding £25, or payments equivalent thereto, the premiums in respect of which are payable at not longer than monthly intervals, and have been paid for at least the two years preceding the fourth day of August nineteen hundred and fourteen.


A provision along those lines would meet the difficulty to which my hon. Friend has given expression. I cannot think why such a provision should have been omitted from the present Bill or from the Act passed early in September.
The other question which I desire to mention is that of hire purchase. I was asked frequently in Scotland last week what is the position of persons who have entered into hire-purchase agreements, in view of the war emergency. While that is not dealt with specifically in this Bill it seems that the point is covered in Clause 1, Sub-section (2, g,)which deals with the taking or resuming possession
of any property by reason of any default by any person in the payment of money or the performance of any obligation.
Sub-section (5) of Section I makes provision for Orders in Council to deal with
the exercise of any right or power of any person or class of persons having any goods in their custody to sell the goods by reason of any default in payment of a debt.
My reason for referring to this matter is that hire purchase has extended very widely since the last war and the number of people who have entered into hire-purchase agreements is very large. As the result of the emergency consequent on the outbreak of hostilities, many people are experiencing difficulty in meeting their obligations under these agreements. It would be wise for the learned Solicitor-General in his reply to make it clear that provision is being made by the Government for people who entered into these agreements. I agree that this Bill will perform a useful work in connection with the courts and in meeting the difficulties that necessarily arise upon the outbreak of war.

Mr. Rhys Davies: I understood the Solicitor-General for Scotland to say that this Bill was an interpretation into Scottish language of the English law. Will he make representations to his colleagues in the Government to see that the Bill is translated into Welsh?

6.58 p.m.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland: The framework of the law of Scotland requires a different phraseology from that of England. It is not a question of translating it into another language. With regard to the question of insurance raised

by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers) and the hon. and learned Member for Greenock (Mr. R. Gibson), obviously that is a point which is equally applicable to England and Scotland, and it would not be appropriate to insert it in the Scottish Bill when there was no opportunity of making it apply to England too. I should like to assure the hon. Members that note will be taken of the points they have made with a view to their being presented to the appropriate central authority for both countries. With regard to hire purchase, the hon. and learned Member has correctly pointed out the three parts of this Bill which may be relevant in considering hire purchase agreements. I think that their phraseology is plain, and so far as anybody under such an agreement attempts to recover payment of a sum of money or to invoke the courts in order to resume possession of any property, the Bill is available for the protection of the other contracting parties.

Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow.— [Lieut.-Colonel Kerr.]

BRITISH SHIPPING (ASSISTANCE) BILL.

Order for Committee read, and discharged.

Bill withdrawn.

WATER UNDERTAKINGS BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read, and discharged.

Bill withdrawn.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

WAR RISKS INSURANCE.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Lieut.-Colonel Kerr.]

7.1 p.m.

Mr. Owen Evans: I desire to draw attention to the administration of the War


Risks Insurance Act in so far as it deals with stocks of commodities in this country. Whatever use this discussion may have, I trust that it will, at any rate, afford an opportunity to the Minister to make a general statement on the position as he now finds it and, possibly, to clarify some very important problems that have arisen. I trust the Minister will not be unwilling to give the House the benefit of his views. It has never been disputed that commodities should be covered against war risks, and both the House and the country have expressed the desire that such a system of insurance should be extended to other classes of property. The only complaint that I have heard against the insurance of commodities, and especially the compulsory aspect of it, is that it is costly and has given rise already to somewhat widespread increases in prices; but from the point of view of individual manufacturing and trading concerns, the serious complaint is that the indeterminate liability that is the unascertained and indefinite premium has been a cause of considerable worry.
One does not wonder at these problems arising, because this was a very hasty piece of legislation to deal with a very complex subject. In normal times it would have occupied a considerable number of days in this House. As it was, Members had not sufficient time to examine all the possible effects of compulsory insurance upon industry. I have been looking up the OFFICIAL REPORT, and I find that the Second Reading of this most revolutionary Measure occupied five and a half hours of Debate and that the Committee stage lasted two and three-quarter hours. As to the subsequent stages. the OFFICIAL REPORT states:
Bill, as amended, considered; read the Third time, and passed.
In those circumstances it is not surprising that a good many problems have arisen and are arising in connection with the administration of the Act. Reading through the speeches on Second Reading I feel that they were not particularly instructive or helpful, because they were inapposite. The main complaint then was that the Bill omitted to deal with the insurance of real property, a matter which has been postponed by the Government to await the report of a committee which has been investigating the subject. I believe that that report has been received,

and perhaps the Minister may be able to tell us when we may expect to have before us a scheme for the insurance of houses and other forms of real property.
But in saying that I have also to say that executives and heads of manufacturing and trading concerns could have been spared a great deal of unessential labour and worry in considering the unascertained demands upon the cash resources of their concerns if a little more time had been taken to see what were the probabilities in regard to air raids. The Minister himself, in his speech on Second Reading, referred to the Bill as one of a seemingly unending series of war Measures which the House had been considering. That was inevitable, and no one complains about it, but I assure him that each of those Measures has raised a great variety of problems in industry. They bristle with difficulties for those who are responsible for the conduct of business. I submit that those engaged in industry should, as far as possible, be saved from being harassed and worried by obscure rules and regulations which are often unintelligible even to learned lawyers. My own experience in submitting these problems to lawyers is that they can give only a very qualified opinion, and even the Board of Trade interpretations are subject to the usual caution that the courts are the final arbiters.
I do not think I need argue that the efforts of manufacturers to-day should be concentrated on using the maximum industrial capacity of the country to produce essential goods for the home and other fronts; but, unfortunately, many of them are compelled to spend much of their valuable time waiting upon the doorsteps of Government offices trying to find some one who can tell them something authoritative about the demands made upon them by the flood of legislation recently passed through the House. We all recognise the immense task in front of the Government, and many of the troubles are unavoidable, and so I do not want to make destructive criticisms but to offer constructive suggestions. The trader who is blessed with the most imaginative optimism can have no conception of the demands made upon him in respect of premiums under this compulsory insurance. I have been told that in many cases they exceed the


normal year's profits of an ordinary business. Certainly it is true to say that the premiums under this compulsory scheme make a big gaping hole in the cash resources of a multitude of industrial undertakings. That is a serious thing in these days, because it is bound to lead to the slippery slope of borrowing at high rates of interest, which will undoubtedly end in disaster if the war is to go on for a considerable time. It is the duty of everybody to conserve the cash resources of his undertaking as much as possible in these days, but it is an undoubted fact that the premium involves a big drain on the cash resources of our industrial concerns.
There has been a good deal of discussion in the Press of the Act and of the scheme, and able writers have suggested that the scheme should be scrapped. I do not ask the Minister to scrap the scheme at all, but I think he must realise that there is a great deal of support in the country for that idea. I suggest that, in regard to premiums, care should be taken not to over-estimate what is required. It should be the care of the Government to under-estimate the premiums required rather than to over-estimate them. The duty of the Government to trade and industry is to take them into their confidence and to say boldly that, after the war is over, we shall mobilise the whole of our financial resources to make good all war damage and to enable industry to start upon a peace footing, rather than that we shall have excessive premiums. The Government should studiously avoid excessive premiums, even to the extent of under-estimating the premiums and making good the deficiency at the end of the war. For Heavens sake let us not mislead the country into believing that the damage will be repaired out of the defeated enemy. That bubble was burst at the end of the last war.
In his speech on the Second Reading, the Minister, with his customary charming and disarming manner, induced the House to pass the Measure with great ease because of the blessing of security it gave to the traders of this country. As to the object of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman said it was essential that maximum stocks of commodities should be accumulated in the country before an emergency occurred, that the Government were responsible for collecting the stocks

and that their efforts were to be supplemented to the fullest extent by private traders. I feel sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the traders responded willingly to that appeal. Then the right hon. Gentleman said: "I cannot get them to do that unless they are satisfied that they are fully covered against war risks." The question is, by whom are they to be covered and at what price? There was no indication that the premium charged would have no relation to the risks contemplated on different classes of goods situated in different parts of the country, with due regard to the heavy expenditure already incurred by traders to protect their goods from enemy action.
The three points which I wish to emphasise are: The premium has had no regard to the description of the goods, to the locality in which they were placed or to the circumstances and the protection which had already been afforded them at great expense by the traders of this country. I think I might ask the Minister for some explanation on this point. If he will be good enough to refer to Section 9 of the Act he will see that it provides:
Different rates of premium may be prescribed for different descriptions of goods, according to the …circumstances in which they are situated.
So far we have heard only about one rate of premiums. I would ask the Minister to say whether a change is contemplated. Does the Board of Trade intend to take advantage of the power given to it in that Section? I suggest that a different rate of premium is justified in respect of different commodities. I cannot for a moment agree that the same premium should be charged in respect of industries with indestructible products as is charged in respect of commodities like wool. The idea that a different premium should apply to different localities does not appeal to me at all. It would give undue protection to concerns in less vulnerable areas.
The second question which I should like to address to the Minister, and to which I hope he will be good enough to reply, relates to another Section, under which the Board of Trade may make orders specifying that "goods of any description" are deemed not to be goods insurable under the Act. Only one order has been made so far, and it refers to the


kind of goods I have indicated, those which arc difficult to destroy, such as metals of different kinds, steel products and so on. I should like him to tell as whether the Board of Trade contemplates making further orders in that direction, and what principles will guide the Board in determining the classes of articles to be exempted under that Section. I happen to know of one case of a commodity which would take 2,445 degrees Fahrenheit in order to melt it. It is impossible to conceive that Hitler's most fiery bomb could cause any damage to that commodity. There are many other instances which I could mention. I submit that the Board of Trade should take advantage of the power which it has to differentiate between different classes of goods in regard to premiums. I do not think that it should differentiate in regard to locality, but that is a matter of personal opinion on which hon. Members may differ.
The third question on which I would like some clarification is that relating to value. In the Act, value alone without qualification is mentioned but, on the other hand, in a circular it issued and in answers to queries and questions which have been addressed to it, the Board of Trade has used the expression "full value." I would like the Minister to tell us how the Board interprets full value. Is it equivalent to replacement value or not? Is it market value, or does it bear the same meaning as in Section 3 of the Act, which has already been made subject to an order in which value is defined as cost or market value, whichever is the lower? I would ask the Minister's guidance in this matter. It makes an enormous difference, and trebles the cost in many instances, according to the meaning you give to the word "value." Apart from that, how is this value to be determined, and by whom? Whatever definition is given to value, it is extremely important that all traders subject to compulsory insurance must declare the right value.

Mr. Loftus: The best basis of value is that taken by chartered accountants, the cost price.

Mr. Evans: That is one method, but I understand that that is not the usual definition in insurance circles. When a person insures goods voluntarily against f re the value is usually taken to be the replacement value.
The Minister may be certain that there are further problems of very great complexity to come before him in connection with this Act. I am sure he knows that already there are eight long lists, containing over 270 questions addressed to him, and that they are still coming in. I put these points to him in no carping spirit, but I would invite him to make a statement on these matters. And may I emphasise that it is essential that the Board of Trade should concentrate upon this subject in order to expedite the decisions and the Orders to be made under the Act. The premium question is, in my submission, the crux of the whole matter. At present a stable premium is probably impossible. There is no information about the damage likely to be done, upon which to base a figure. I welcome heartily the announcement made by the right hon. Gentleman recently that one month's premium for the initial period shall be credited. That carries people up to 1st December next; but what is to happen after that? The Minister has already conceded—if I may use that expression—that the reasonable cost of this insurance may be added to the price of goods, with, of course, due regard, as he put it, to the rate at which goods are being turned over. I am sure the whole House will be glad that many trade organisations in this country have impressed on their members the necessity of keeping prices as low as possible. One of the main objects of the scheme is to encourage traders to keep adequate stocks by removing the fear of heavy losses owing to enemy action. That being so, every effort should be made to reach as quickly as possible a condition of affairs in which traders can know their liability wilth some reasonable certainty.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. A. V. Alexander: We are all grateful to the hon. Member for raising this matter, and we have listened to him with great interest. The questions he has put are important, although I do not suppose that he will expect us all to agree with every one of the sectional business opinions that he has expressed. I think it is opportune to get a statement from the Government about the general position in regard to war risks insurance. Here is a scheme which was not launched suddenly, so far as stocks were concerned, after the declaration of the war. The date of the Royal Assent was before the war.


Although the urgency of the insurance was quite plain to us all, I think it seems to us now that there might have been more consultation with the various interests, commercial, trade and insurance, than there seems to have been before the matter was put through to the final stage of the Order after war broke out. That Order fixed a rate of premium for the goods section of the insurance which was so high as ½ per cent. per month, or, for straight-run stock, 6 per cent. per annum.
There is no doubt that the insurance has proved costly, and, of course, a great deal depends in regard to its final incidence at the last point of sale, on the nature of the commodity and the processes through which it has passed. I will come back in a moment to the indestructible stocks in connection with which the hon. Member is such an expert, but in regard to the large number of manufactured articles manufactured in this country the cumulative effect of war risks insurance paid at every stage is almost devastating in its final "effect on the consumer. Take a trade with which my own organisation is connected in a small way—cotton. You buy a stock of raw cotton at the warehouse, and you pay half per cent. on that. You pay again on the cotton yarn, you pay again on the woven cloth, you pay again on the finishing, bleaching and packing processes, you pay again on merchant stocks, you pay again on retailer's stocks. Altogether you have paid the premium seven times when you come to the final stage. The President of the Board of Trade seems a little surprised, but I assure him that that is the case. If he had to run a business he would know it. It is not always shown prima facie upon an invoice with so much added for insurance; in many cases it is just taken into account.
Perhaps the retailer finally gets a bill which may vary according to the class of commodity, governed by the number of times the stock is turned over in the course of the year, and governed, too, sometimes by the honesty of the merchant. The retailer has to pay anything from 3 or 6 or 9 per cent. on dry goods, according to the way in which the charge is made plus what is fair to him as the market increase on a product the price of which in many cases has been affected by the cumulative additions of war risks

insurance. That makes a very serious charge indeed to the consumer.
There is the question also to be considered of whether the rate itself was a right one. I do not complain about the advisers of the President of the Board of Trade perhaps looking at the thing in the rush of the first week of war from the possibility of a series of air raids, which might have been the case if a lightning war was to be the method of attack, but I suggest that we might have had a revision at an early date. We welcome the arrangements of the President of the Board of Trade under the first three months' period by which we carry into the next monthly period a month's credit of the premium already paid for the first three months. But it is reasonable to ask, in the light of the stocks at present covered, that the general rate of premium to all those who are engaged in trade and wish to make that revenue producing profit so essential to the State in the near future, instead of being a rate as high as half per cent. per month, should have been very much less.
I have never been able to understand why there should have been a distinction made of the stocks of individual traders where the total stock of a trader was less than £1,ooo. In many cases a particular trader might object, but there are as many cases, I am sure, in which the trader might say, "If I am forced to insure for war risks outside the Government scheme, I am going to have to pay a great deal more and have far less chance of being recouped." All stocks of £100 or over held by individual traders ought to come within the compulsory scheme, which would, in my judgment, lead to a lowering of the risk premium rate. Take, for example, the wide exemption contained in the Order of 22nd September, which was not by any means for all indestructible material. I should have thought that coal, especially when it is stock, would have been included. Coal is exempt. A whole range of important metals are exempt, and I should have thought that it would be desirable that a very large part of the stocks of the country should contribute, especially in this case where, by the use of these materials, the owners are going to do well out of the war. They should contribute their share to the general pool of the war risk insurance fund. We have to insure against war damage caused by an attack


upon the community as a whole which you ask the community as a whole to resist. The whole of the community ought to take its proper share of the premium to be levied. There are some who would say that it would be better for the State to undertake the whole of the risk itself and charge it all to the citizens. I do not hold with that view. Usually when you come to deal with stocks at all they are in the possession of firms, associations or corporations who hope to make a profit out of them. They should contribute, as suggested, on the basis of the scheme which the President of the Board of Trade is working out.
A suggestion was made just now by the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. O. Evans) that rather unsettled me. It was that it might have been left until some period after the war for the Government to organise all the resources of finance in the country in order to help industry, finance and production generally to become mobilised in the best interests of peace and prosperity. That sounds very nice as a phrase, but if we are to be faced with a war of three or four years of a most exhaustive character, in which our economic resources finally, by the very strain upon them, become a deciding factor, we shall have a very different situation to face after the war. In my judgment, seeing that in the course of the war period the people handling the stocks make profits at a time when there is constant internal spending, the Government should collect all that it might legitimately collect at that time in order to cover these damages and risks. I hope, therefore, that from that point of view the President of the Board of Trade will listen to the hon. Member for Cardigan where he has a case, though not where I consider he has not a case.
There is another point in respect of which the hon. Member did me a great service by touching upon it. He expressed the hope that the Government might to-day be able to say a word on that very large and important area of insurance not covered under the War Risks Insurance Act, namely, the insurance of real property. I spoke at some length upon this problem before the war in the middle of July. The fact that insurance undertakings are seeking to serve a public demand for this kind of insurance at rates which are very often higher than otherwise would be the case under a Gov-

ernment scheme of the kind, shows that the public at large wants an insurance scheme. It ought to have an insurance scheme which brings the largest measure of funds with the least incidence of charge to the individual owner of property, especially bearing in mind the fact that a large percentage of the working class now own their own properties. It ought to be a scheme which would deal with the economic problem at the end of the war by creating the largest insurance fund available in the circumstances for clearing up the repayment of war damage. It has been one of my misfortunes in the last few weeks to appear before the Weir Committee—I do not mean a misfortune from the point of view of meeting the committee—and I shall be exceedingly disappointed if the question of war risks insurance of real property is left in the position in which the Act passed by this House excluded it altogether. I am convinced that while the statement which the Chancellor of the Exchequer made some months ago was one of good will, a suggestion that you might deal with war damage to property at large after the war on the basis of what you would be able to afford for the community, would not bring a great deal of comfort and reassurance.
If we estimate the value of real property in the country as not less than £10,000,000,000, the Government would find no grumbling but rather general support from the country if they were to impose a fixed rate of, say, 10 per cent. on that property value, which would bring in a premium income of £50,000,000 a year. We are already getting quotations from certain companies of from 15s. to 20s. per cent. However well managed and well intentioned they may be, they must have a very much larger ratio of expenses than would be the case in connection with a great scheme of Government insurance or re-insurance.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is now dealing with something which would require legislation, and which is outside this particular Act.

Mr. Alexander: I should not wish to introduce any matter which would be out of order in a Debate of this kind, and I will leave it where I have put it, in the hope that having trenched upon forbidden ground, through your kindness and courtesy, Mr. Speaker, what I have said will find a place in the mind and the heart of


the Minister. I hope that when the President of the Board of Trade replies he will say something which will reassure us on one or two points. Can he widen the area of the stocks to be covered? Can he thereby reduce the premium? Will he remember the effect upon each different industry of the assessment made which is so devastating in its cumulative effect? Perhaps he will make a statement which will help to correct any errors that we may have fallen into in regard to this question. It is very difficult to estimate the total value of stocks of all kind to be insured. If the right hon. Gentleman could give us figures and he could tell us what kind of premium he hopes to collect, it would help us. Certainly, it would be helpful to traders who are feeling the effects of the present position very much.

Mr. George Griffiths: Am I to understand from your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, that private property cannot be discussed in this Debate?

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman referred to the insurance of real property, which is certainly outside the scope of this Act of Parliament. It would necessitate legislation and it would not be in order on the Motion for the Adjournment to deal with legislation.

7.44 p.m.

Mr. Higgs: Hon. Members in all quarters of the House are grateful to the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. O. Evans) for bringing forward this important matter. I have received more correspondence on this particular problem during the last month than on any other subject with regard to my Parliamentary duties, and I am sure that other hon. Members will have received much correspondence of a similar character. In regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) about covering stocks seven times over, his argument is correct if it takes seven years to manufacture a commodity, but if the commodity is manufactured in one year, surely one stock would replace another stock and you are only counting the stock once. I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman takes so long to manufacture his commodity.

Mr. Alexander: I prefer to base my argument on the invoiced charges made upon me.

Mr. Higgs: This question of insurance in regard to stocks, plant, machinery and building is causing very great concern to manufacturers all over the country. The Government, obviously, fear being able to fulfil their obligations if they extend the insurance beyond commodities; but I would remind them that the great problem of evacuation has been dealt with to a certain extent, and I consider that a far more difficult problem than covering the necessities of industry by insurance. The fire insurance system has been evolved over a period of 100 years, and we are trying to solve the insurance of war damage in 100 hours. There are, and there will be, considerable difficulties in solving the problem. I do not think the public will complain at having to pay any extra premium that may be necessary, but the public may riot if there is not sufficient protection, and there is a large amount of damage done by air raids.
The Government ought to face this matter more squarely and take into consideration the difficulties and the fears of the community in order to satisfy the large number of people who are concerned. They could and they ought to do something at least to give some relief, but not necessarily complete indemnity. We are used to having 100 per cent. cover and 100 per cent. indemnity, but I do not think that can be expected now. It would be far better if less indemnity were promised, with a less premium. The loss, as hon. Members opposite have said, must fall on the whole community. I would remind the House that air raid insurance in the last war brought in a profit of something like £100,000,000. I am not suggesting that any premiums are going to bring in a like profit on this occasion, but I do say that we ought to be able to manage on a reasonable premium. The tendency so far has been to charge too high a premium, in order to be sure that the Government will have enough money to compensate those who suffer loss. The object of the Government ought to be to charge a lower premium and to put up the scale in case of necessity, rather than scaling down as we are doing at the present time.
The President of the Board of Trade gave the value of commodities as something approaching £2,000,000,000 and the value of buildings as £12,000,000,000. Obviously, if we are going to cover commodities, buildings, plant and so forth, and to give complete cover, the premium will be prohibitive; but I see no reason why we should endeavour to give a 100 per cent. cover. I suggest that there shall be no exceptions. The present exceptions are causing very great difficulties throughout the country. Iron and steel goods are exempt. On the other hand, I came across a case the other day where a quarry owner had to pay on his stocks of stone chippings, which are less destructible than iron and steel. Anomalies of that description will arise under the present system, and the best plan would be to have no exceptions at all. It is a ridiculous state of affairs that a man has to pay insurance on quarry chippings, when iron and steel goods are exempt. Such a thing is beyond reasonable explanation. The public were allowed to register prior to 3rd September. War then broke out. The public who were insuring as late as 20th September were paying a pro rata premium. They were saved the premium from 3rd September to 20th September. This is a compulsory scheme. I would inform the House that there are many owners of stocks who are not insured to-day—I venture to say that it may be within the order of 10 per cent. or 20 per cent.— and yet the Government have taken no action against these people. I believe there is a penalty of £100 and then a penalty of £50 a day. If these people come into the insurance scheme to-day, on the information which I have, they are charged only at a pro rata premium.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Oliver Stanley): That is not correct.

Mr. Higgs: The Minister says that I am wrong, and I am glad to hear that that is so, but I believe I am correct in saying that pro rata premiums were paid up to 20th September. The Minister has not informed insurance companies directly of changes and rulings that he has made before they have been issued in the Press, and the result has been that insurance companies have not had the necessary information to give to their clients when they have been approached, and these clients have obtained more information

through the Press than through the insurance companies.
I advocate that the premium should be reduced, that more commodities such as plant and buildings in the case of manufactures should be included and that we should get some sort of cover for all our possessions. The companies are covered to a certain extent, and while I do not expect that we should get 100 per cent. cover, I consider that with the premium which is being charged at the present moment more cover should be given, resulting in greater security. Some industries have approximately a third of their money in plant, a third in buildings and a third in stock. A ridiculous state of affairs arises when the less destructible third is insured, and the other two-thirds at the present moment cannot be insured for war risks; I hope the Minister will give further consideration to this very pressing problem which is in the minds of all manufacturers now.

7.53 p.m.

Mr. Horabin: I will detain the House, I hope, for only a few moments on what I feel to be certain anomalies and difficulties created by the present scheme of a flat rate for the insurance of commodities. Many people in this country at the present moment feel that the relative degree of war risks for stocks of different types of merchandise in this country are related to that of fire risks in peace time, and I should have thought it would have been sounder to have calculated a premium for the insurance of commodities on the same basis as fire premiums instead of on the flat rate. For instance, the fire insurance premium on steel may be as low as 1s. 9d. per cent. On paper it may be 7s. 6d. per cent. and on millinery as high as 14s. per cent. These premiums are calculated on a sound actuarial basis derived from the long experience of the insurance companies.

Mr. Stanley: Does the hon. Member think that a fire insurance premium on any of those commodities would have any application?

Mr. Horabin: The position is that you may have to charge a much higher premium, but there would still be relations between the risks of these different types of commodities. If the premium for commodity insurance had been calculated as multiples of the fire rate, the


President of the Board of Trade would not have been faced with commodities less liable to damage being withdrawn from the scheme. I think the owners of the stocks of these less vulnerable commodities would not have agitated to have them withdrawn from the scheme, as some have done. The Minister is left with the bad risks and is losing the good risks. It would be a simple matter for the insurance companies to operate a scheme based on multiples of the fire insurance rate.
There is another aspect of this problem. The President of the Board of Trade told us, I believe, during the Second Reading of the Insurance Bill, that the value of the stocks coming under the scheme amounted approximately to £2,000,000,000, and at 10s. per cent. per month the total annual premium as long as all stocks were included under the scheme would be approximately £120,000,000 per year. At the new rate for the first three months announced last week the annual payment would be approximately £90,000,000 per year. As traders are allowed to pass the cost of the scheme on to the consumer this becomes a substantial addition to the cost of goods sold. For two reasons this addition to the cost of goods sold far exceeds the premium that will be obtained by the Government under the scheme.
As the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) has told us, commodities may pass through three, four five or even more hands as they are turned from the raw material into the finished merchandise bought by a consumer, and at each stage the percentage is added to the invoice to cover the cost of commodity insurance. Many traders, unfortunately, do not know their stock turns accurately in peace time, much less do they know them under the present conditions of war, and in self-protection the trader must add more to his selling price in order to cover the cost of commodity insurance than he would if he could exactly determine his stock turn. This addition for contingencies also comes out of the pocket of the consumer. Again, the cost of commodity insurance to the consumer is, after all, not a straightforward sum of the amounts at each stage required to cover the cost of commodity insurance. This additional charge for commodity insurance made at each preceding stage

becomes an element of cost on which the trader calculates his gross margin, to cover his overheads and net profit, and the consumer as a result of this scheme may be called upon to pay an increase in price of anything from 3 to 10 per cent. or even more, although only 1½ per cent. may be added at each stage in the process of manufacture.
For these reasons I believe that the present scheme will lead to a substantial increase in the cost of living and I do not think 5 per cent. would be an extravagant estimate of what the increase might be although that is only a guess on my part. The whole cost of the premiums under this scheme is being paid ultimately by the consumer, that is, by the community as a whole. These premiums are an indirect tax levied by the Government on the consumer, and the cost of the collection of this tax under the present scheme is unnecessarily expensive because, as I have shown, it is collected at every stage from the sale of the raw material to the sale of the finished product, and at each stage an element of gross profit is added to cover the overheads of the trade. In spite of what the hon. Member for Hillsborough said, it might be in the national interest to abolish the present scheme altogether and for the Treasury to take full responsibility for any loss which occurred as the result of enemy action. I think that would prevent the rise in prices that seems to be inevitable under the present scheme and which, if it goes on, must result in a general and, in my opinion, a justified demand for increases in wages. In fact, this scheme may bring about an inflationary spiral which everyone in this House wishes to avoid.

8.0 p.m.

Sir Joseph McConnell: I was greatly intrigued by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander), who said he thought the small man should be brought into this insurance scheme. I have some nodding acquaintance with financial matters, and I understand that the small man is in a very bad position as regards purchasing power in comparison with the great multiple shops. If the right hon. Gentleman is going to bring these small men in pari passu with the great multiple shops, will he put them in with the same advantages in respect of purchasing powers?

Mr. Alexander: Does the hon. Baronet mean the purchase of insurance?

Sir J. McConnell: I think the right hon. Gentleman has not quite understood my question. This is an occasion where there is a great emergency and it is proposed to put everyone in on equal terms. The right hon. Gentleman has proposed that the small man should be put in on the same terms as the great multiple shops. Is that correct?

Mr. Alexander: I did not quote multiple shops.

Sir J. McConnell: The right hon. Gentleman will not contradict me when I say that. If you are going to put them in on the same terms as far as insurance is concerned, you must put them in on the same terms for purchasing power. In other words, the small man must be able to buy his goods at the same price as the multiple shops and he has to have the same advantages.

Mr. Alexander: As the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Horabin) has said, this insurance premium is passed on to the consumer. This commodity, if you like to call it so, of insurance, can be bought in two ways. It can be bought through a Government scheme at a low rate or it can be purchased, as many small traders are purchasing it on their small stocks, at a much higher rate. Which does the hon. Baronet prefer?

Sir J. McConnell: It is no use begging the question. The right hon. Gentleman knows that in all these cases when the time comes the big man wins and the small man is crushed out. All I ask is that fair play shall be shown to the small man, the small retailer or the small wholesaler, who has done great service to the country. It is a very great responsibility that the House has to see that these huge multiple shops and combinations, let them be co-operative or any other multiple shops, should not be given any advantage at the expense of the small individual trader who is the backbone of the community.

3.4 p.m.

Mr. A. Edwards: The hon. Member who opened the discussion suggested a kind of differential scale, and my right hon. Friend suggested that that was an impracticable proposal. He went on immediately afterwards to say that it should

be a charge spread over the entire community, and other speakers have emphasised that view. If that is the case, I cannot understand what is the objection to the Government taking the charge in its first stage instead of the last. It is obvious that every time this charge is put on to manufactured goods it ultimately has to come back to the Government, and the Government is going to provide all these charges and all these profits, because it is the only purchaser in the market at the present time. It is the same with property. I cannot understand why a man having a business in the North of Scotland, not contributing to the common pool as far as fighting the war is concerned, should get off more lightly than those who live on the North-East coast, where we had to bear the first attack during the last war. The iron and steel industry has been exempt, but I do not see why it should. It has no right to be. That is the particular industry in my constituency. If you are going to make it a fair charge, it should be spread over all industry, because all are contributing to the war, or are going eventually to derive their income from the Government.
I should like to give a specific illustration of how it will affect the steel industry. We know that there is in contemplation a fairly substantial increase in the selling price of steel. The Government is going to have to pay more for it. The justification is the higher rates of insurance and, if you bring them into this scheme also, there is some justification for a considerable increase in the price of steel. You cannot mention a single industry which is not going to have to pay higher prices and increase its costs as a result of that single action. In the iron and steel industry there is an automatic scale. It has been pointed out that wages will have to rise within a short time. There is a sliding scale, and wages automatically go up. If you put £2 a ton on the price of steel this month, next quarter automatically the cost of wages goes up. Not only that, but linked up with the sliding scale is an automatic increase in the price of coke, whether there is any justification or not, and obviously when the price of coke goes up the price of coal also goes up.
I cannot understand why the Government should introduce a scheme like this, which is going to involve an immense


amount of labour and difficulty for everyone concerned. You are going to begin the spiral inclination, but you can prevent it in its first stages. Why does not the Government take the sensible step of absorbing these costs at the first stage instead of the last, when you have played havoc with the whole of industry? If they had the courage to face up to it I believe they could. They could evolve a scheme to absorb these costs at the first stage, which apply to other things than insurance and freight, and keep in check this awful prospect of uncontrolled inflation. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to the problem.

8.9 p.m.

Mr. Foot: I should like to add one or two illustrations to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Horabin), who spoke as to the effect on the price level that this scheme is bound to have, and is indeed having. Some days ago the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Reed) asked a question and, after the President of the Board of Trade replied, I asked him whether he realised that in many cases far more than 6 per cent. was being passed on, particularly by wholesalers who charge 1¼ per cent., or some such figure, on these prices, and who turn over their stocks many times a year. I asked whether he was watching that aspect of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman replied:
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has called attention to this point. It has been assumed that in all cases this charge represents 6 per cent. on the stock. That, of course, is a complete fallacy, because it depends upon the number of times that the stock is turned over in the course of a year. I am investigating a case where that charge is being made to see whether, in fact, it represents the real turnover of the stock."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th September, 1939; col. 941, Vol. 351.]
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman could give us the results of that investigation, but I should like him to say a word as to what steps the Board of Trade is proposing to take to deal with this question of passing on, and passing on in certain cases a great deal more than the premium which actually has to be paid. I have had later information from Scotland saying that since the matter was ventilated in this House, and since attention was drawn to it by the Ministry of Information on the initiative of the Board of Trade, there has been some improve-

ment in the matter, but I did hear this morning that there are certain firms which are still charging 1¼ per cent. on invoices; firms which turn over their stock at least 15 to 20 times per annum. That is a type of concealed profiteering. It enables the particular wholesaler to make considerable profit out of this scheme at the expense of customers, and ultimately at the expense of the consuming public, and it would be of great interest if the President of the Board of Trade can tell us what steps are being taken to deal with this particular form of raising prices.
But in spite of the exemptions which are being made the scheme does weigh unduly heavily on certain concerns. Already you have exempted jewellers because they turn over their stock in a long time, but let me give another kind of example. There are certain concerns whose industry has been practically brought to a standstill by the outbreak of war. I have in mind the case of a firm which produces high-class fabrics for making curtains and cushion covers. They produce a form of luxury goods and their business, although it has not been completely broken down, has been slowed down very much. They have to keep a large quantity of stock on hand and have to pay this considerable total upon it.

Mr. Stanley: To what particular industry is the hon. Member referring?

Mr. Foot: I am referring to a concern which, as I have said, is producing what may be called luxury fabrics for making curtains and similar articles. Their market has naturally been much diminished by the events of the last few weeks. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Horabin) referred to the £1,000 limit. It seems to me that among the smaller class of tradesman an anomaly has been produced by this limitation. If you get a man who holds stock which is over the £1,000 margin he is compelled to insure all his stock, but if you get a man whose holding is £800 he is not under an obligation to insure at all. If he does not insure it gives him a considerable advantage over the man who is not in a much bigger way of business but who is compelled to carry this particular burden. I should have thought that there should be a similar exemption up to a certain amount in each case, or, much better, that the Board of Trade should adopt the sugges-


tion made by the right hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) and considerably lower the figure at which this exemption takes effect. I hope that in addition to the other matters which have been mentioned the President of the Board of Trade will be able to deal with these three specific points.

8.15 p.m.

Major Owen: There is one matter to which I should like to refer as it affects my constituency in particular. We have only two industries in the constituency, and one is the slate industry, which at the present moment is suffering from great depression largely as a result of Government action. The industry in normal times employs about 11,000 men, but in view of the fact that the Government have stopped all building schemes and does not allow slates to be specified for any purposes appertaining to the Air Force or the War Office there is no demand for slates at the moment. I notice that in the annexe to the Order issued by the Minister non-metalliferous mines and quarries are excluded so long as their products are not manufactured. That is in paragraph 7. In the next list, in paragraph 8, tiles and bricks are excluded, and they are in my view quite as destructible as slates. All I am appealing to the President of the Board of Trade for is that he should include among the exempted trades the slate industry. At the present moment the quarries in my constituency are not producing slates for sale. They are compelled to produce them and put them into stock. If they have to pay this heavy insurance it means that the quarries will have to close down and the result of that would be unemployment benefit for the workers would cost the Government nearly £750,000 per annum. I appeal to the Minister that if tiles are excluded from war insurance risks then there is a case made out for the exclusion of slates also. The matter affects a large number of employés and for their sake, and for the sake of this particular part of the country, which is not liable to any war risks, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will see his way to put them on the annexe of exemptions to the Order.

8.18 p.m.

Mr. Stanley: I think it would be for the convenience of the House if I deal first with some of the wider questions which have been raised in this interesting

Debate and then endeavour to answer those questions which are of more particular interest to particular constituencies. Mr. Speaker has already ruled that it would be cut of order to discuss, on this Debate, any question of the extension of the terms of the Order to such things as house property, and if he had not done so I should have had to refer the right hon. Gentleman to the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said to-day that he was going to make a statement on the subject, and that of course I could not anticipate his speech. I think we are all grateful to the hon. Member for having raised this question and for the manner in which he raised it. I am glad to have the opportunity of discussing some of the points and without offence, pointing out some of the fallacies as up to the moment I have not had an opportunity of doing.
This is a matter of great importance. We are here dealing with something quite novel, the incidence of which for the moment—and long may it remain so— we do not know. The suggestions which hon. Members have made, and the accounts which they have given of their difficulties, will be of very great value in trying to shape the scheme, for obviously the scheme is still not in its final shape and is still capable of adjustment. When we come to discuss the big question, on which there appears to be some difference even among hon. Members sitting very close to one another, as to whether the insurance principle should be maintained or whether there should merely be some form of State compensation, it is necessary to go a little into the history of this matter in order to see the origin of the Act and its principles. It arose out of a request by the trading community themselves, over a year ago, that they should be made fully secure and that they should know that the stocks of commodities which they held, if war came suddenly and the stocks were destroyed, would be replaced by some means, so that they would be able to carry on their business.
That was important not only to them but to the Government, for unless the trading community received an assurance of that kind and could be certain that they would get full cover, it was clear that, during the period which intervened between then and the war, they would have allowed their stocks to run down


and that, at a time when the Government wanted stocks of every kind in this country to be at their highest level, there would have been that great force working to reduce the stocks. Therefore, when the Government appealed to the trading community to increase their stocks in the national interest, they gave to the trading community the pledge—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) knows this well, for he has had a great deal to do with the matter, and we have had many discussions together—that they would introduce a scheme which would result, not in some indeterminate amount being paid at the end of the war, but full cover when the damage took place. The trading community acted on this and increased their stocks, and many people are holding increased stocks of commodities now because of that. Therefore, it would be a breach of faith to introduce in place of this scheme something which gave them any less satisfactory cover.
What is the alternative to an insurance scheme of this kind? Surely, it must be something which merely makes them dependent upon the Government replacing stocks. If that onus were put upon the Government to replace stocks, it is clear that, in the national interest, all the Government could do at the moment would be to replace stocks which they felt it to be in the national interest to replace. Consequently, there would be a differentiation. At the present time, there might be in one street a branch of the co-operative society and a branch of Marks and Spencer. If the same bomb destroyed the stocks of both shops, they would both be entitled to full cover for their goods, but it might well be that, under the alternative scheme, the Government would say that. on the whole, they considered that they wanted only one stock in that street, and it would be a question as to which of the two stocks they should replace. That would introduce an element of uncertainty, discrimination, inequity and unfairness between different traders which the Government pledged themselves a year ago not to do. I feel that when the traders consider what is the alternative to the present scheme, they will be the first to realise that this is the sort of scheme for which they asked, and the only one

which can really give them any feeling of security.
It is true that when the Bill was passing through the House, it was debated on the basis of a voluntary scheme, although at the time, in my Second Reading speech, I distinctly pointed out to the House that not only were their powers in the Bill to make it compulsory, but that probably experience would show that it would have to be made compulsory. I had anticipated that, had events pursued a normal course and the emergency not arisen until all preparations were complete, we should have a period in which we could see whether a difficulty—I think a very real difficulty—arose under the voluntary system which would make a compulsory system essential—namely, the very thing which is advocated by one or two hon. Members, but I am glad to say rejected by the majority, a differentiation of rates between various areas. Had there been under a voluntary scheme a position in which all the so called safe areas—one can never be quite so certain that they really are as safe as may be thought—largely, perhaps, the country districts, stayed out, and naturally all the people in the dangerous areas wanted to come in, it would have been necessary to increase the premium in the dangerous areas, and immediately there would have been a price disparity between the safe areas and the dangerous areas which would have increased what is already a competitive advantage enjoyed by the safe areas. After all, a man in a dangerous area now can anticipate much more difficult conditions of business. His transport arrangements are upset, and there is the possibility of air-raid warnings keeping his customers in shelters for long periods. He is at a disadvantage compared with a man in what we think of as a safe area. I felt then, on the question of the voluntary scheme, just as I feel now, on the question of a differentiation of rates, that it would not be in the national interest to do anything which would increase the disparity and make it more difficult for the man who manufactured, and indeed the man who distributed, in the dangerous industrial, crowded areas to carry on in competition with the man who enjoys what seem to be more secure circumstances.
Actually, it was inevitable that the Act should be made compulsory, for the whole plan, which alone would have made the


voluntary system possible, had not time to be completed. Hon. Members will recall that the idea was that there would be a period of registration. Those who wished to join the scheme would register beforehand and they would know that from the outbreak of war they would be covered at once; and others who did not register beforehand would be able to take out: a policy after the war began, but it would take two or three weeks for them to do that, and during that period they would have no cover. That was the incentive to register in peace time. The emergency came when the registration had only just begun, and when even the people who meant to register in peace time had really not had time to do so. It is all very well now, after a month in which we have been free from air raids, to look back and say that we could have carried out the registration and that there would have been plenty of time to bring in the scheme; but there might have been the danger, and we had to anticipate the damage from air raids happening not four or five weeks, but four or five hours after the declaration of war.
Therefore, we had to take steps to cover everybody, because there may have been many who would have wished to cover themselves under the voluntary scheme of registration, but had not any reasonable time in which to do so. Once you said to everybody, "If a bomb falls within an hour you are covered," then you had to say to everybody, "You are all to be covered equally and you must all share the liability for meeting it." Once we say that only a scheme of insurance can give the traders the full and immediate cover which I think they desire, and which I think is valuable, once we realise why it was necessary to make any insurance scheme compulsory in the first place —and I believe it should remain compulsory now because if it is compulsory that means it is universal—then I think we come back to the main criticism of this scheme as it is now operating, as being a criticism of the rate of the premium.
Here, of course, we are sailing completely uncharted seas. Anybody's opinion as to whether the premium is a correct one or not, is almost as good as anybody else's, but let me say this at once. The rate of premium has not been fixed with any idea of making great profits out of this insurance scheme. In fact, we shall, as time goes on, adjust the rate

of premium from time to time as closely as possible in order to keep the scheme on an even keel. It is not even designed with a view to building up large reserves out of which, if things possibly became worse, these payments could be met. It is frankly based on the assumptions given to me by those best qualified to judge— although I agree that even those best qualified to judge have only had what is almost guesswork to go upon—of the rate of injury which we might have to expect during the first year of war.
Hon. Members often say, and I believe they are right, that the people of this country will do anything if you tell them the truth, and that there is no need to wrap things up for them in cotton-wool. There is, I think, a great deal of wishful thinking at the moment about the possibility of the extent of damage by air raids. We all hope that it will be much less than we expect, but, naturally, we take every step we can to minimise it, and I do not think it is any good disguising from ourselves the very serious extent of the damage which there may be. I hope that this rate, as fixed, will be proved in the future to be too high. All I can say is that it has only been fixed at this rate on a calculation of the assumptions given to me of the rate of damage which may be suffered; that there is no attempt in it to make profit out of the scheme, and no attempt to do anything except to make the necessary provision on those assumptions. I have already given an assurance that as and when we get the data which will enable us to correct the assumptions—which are all we have been able to work upon up to now—I shall be perfectly ready to consider, immediately, alterations of the premium level.
We have already had one of our assumptions disproved. One of the assumptions on which we proceeded was that the rate of damage would start immediately from the outbreak of the war. That assumption having been disproved, I took the step, I think with the approval of the House, of crediting to the people concerned the premiums paid for that month which we expected would have to bear its full share of risk, but which in fact has passed without any damage at all. People may take that as an earnest that we are really aiming only at raising under this scheme the money that is really necessary and that, when


circumstances justify it, we shall be only too ready to give the trader the benefit of the greater security and the less expectation of damage on which we think we can count.
Beyond those main points there are, I think, only one or two others with which I need deal. There is first the exemption of people with stocks of a value under £1,000. Let me be quite frank upon that. The insurance companies warned me that to bring into this scheme all the multitude of small traders would make it almost impossible to operate and would certainly add very much to the expense. Taking into account the great cost of dealing with the multitude of small people, I do not believe that the addition to the fund would be of any great amount or that it would be substantial enough to make any real difference to the premiums which were being paid by others under the insurance scheme. Of course, I would remind hon. Members that these traders are still entitled to insure voluntarily and, as far as I can make out a certain number are taking advantage of that.

Mr. Alexander: I would like to interpolate that some of the companies who may have made those representations to the right hon. Gentleman are actually undertaking those insurances now. If they are going to the small traders and undertaking insurances—and I have one or two instances and I shall be glad to show the right hon. Gentleman the correspondence—it is difficult to understand why they should not be willing to do it within the Government scheme. In fact, I hold the view that while it is much cheaper to insure through the Government scheme than through individual insurances with a company, the allowance which is made to the insurance company is quite generous.

Mr. Stanley: I wish the right hon. Gentleman would give me details of such cases. My recollection is that one of the things which we laid down in the Act was that once war started no one was to carry out this particular type of insurance, except the Government.

Mr. Alexander: The right hon. Gentleman has just admitted that it is open to any of the traders themselves to insure voluntarily. Surely if they do not want

to insure in the Government scheme, you would not stop them from insuring with other people?

Mr. Stanley: Section 10 of the Act lays it down that after the date on which the scheme is put into operation no person shall, except as a person authorised by the Board of Trade, issue policies in pursuance of the scheme. If the right hon. Gentleman will give me particulars of the cases, I should like to look into them. It would appear from what he said to be a serious infraction of the law.

Mr. Foot: The Act says:
goods insurable under this part of this Act.
Supposing someone was carrying on business and his stock was valued at less than £1,000, might it not be argued that those goods were not insurable?

Mr. Stanley: No, it could not possibly be. He is entitled to insure if he desires.

Mr. Foot: But is it not the case that he might be offered that accommodation by an insurance company and it would not be any breach of the Act?

Mr. Stanley: No, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. Suppose his goods to be uninsurable, he cannot be compelled to insure them, nor can he do it voluntarily, but the man with a stock worth less than £1,000 is in quite a different position. His goods are insurable, but he is not forced to insure. The other main point has been the exclusion from the operation of the Act of certain classes of commodities. There are two grounds on which orders have been issued excluding certain commodities from the scheme. One is on the ground of indestructibility and the other, applying only to a very limited class, is the ground of unsaleability. It is an attempt to deal, not with the particular case to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but with that sort of case where goods, owing to the emergency, have become completely unsaleable. The case I had in mind, for instance, was that of postage stamps. They may be nominally extremely valuable, but for the purpose of trade they have really ceased to have any value. The same remark applies to antique furniture and other things of that sort. In regard to indestructibility, wherever there is a risk, I think the thing has got to be on a level basis, but there are certain types of material, like stone in quarries and many iron and steel pro-


ducts, where there really is no risk at all for all practical purposes, although I quite agree that the thing has got to be used carefully and has got to be applied only to those cases where the risk of destruction, owing to the nature of the substance, is a very small one indeed.
The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) raised one other point, and that was the question of this insurance premium having been made the pretext for raising prices. The right hon. Gentleman opposite referred to the cumulative effect of these premiums paid at all the various stages of manufacture. I think he would agree with me that that cumulative effect is not justified. He is not really claiming that at every step a man is entitled to add 1½ per cent. or whatever it may be. It all depends upon the length of time that he retains the commodity during the process through which he puts it. If the commodity of the right hon. Gentleman passed from the raw material to the ultimate consumer during it does not matter how many processes in the course of a year, the total premium could never exceed 6 per cent.

Mr. Alexander: That is all very well in regard to organisations which have entire control of every process, from the purchased raw material right down to the last retail sale, but in fact nearly all these contract industries are owned by different people at each stage, and they pass on their amount of insurance at every stage, and so it becomes cumulative.

Mr. Stanley: The right hon. Gentleman will agree with me that they must only pass on their insurance for their stage, according to the length of time for which they will retain the commodity for their process, and it is only if altogether they have retained a commodity for various stages for the period of a year that the full 6 per cent. can possibly become payable. Of course, if a large number of people have taken advantage of the scheme to charge at various stages a great deal more than the actual extra cost, that cannot be justified, and that is the sort of case to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention. I cannot remember the particular case that he mentioned, but we have inquired into a certain number of cases ourselves where people did it under a genuine misunderstanding. There is, however, a number of cases far more

flagrant than any of those that the right hon. Gentleman talked about, cases not of 6 per cent. or 10 per cent., but cases where the goods were turned over three times in a year and where they charged 33⅓ per cent. There, of course, it was flagrant profiteering. As the House is aware, I have given notice of a Bill to deal with such cases, and I can assure the House that that kind of profiteering will come within the scope of the Bill just as much as any other. As to the commodity mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvonshire (Major Owen), in his constituency, I understand that discussions are going on at the moment in regard to that, and I cannot say any more about it now.
In conclusion, let me say that I think this Debate has been, from our point of view, very useful. I do not for a moment claim that this scheme is perfect, that it does not present great difficulties, and that there is not a number of problems still to be worked out. I hope that hon. Members who either know these difficulties from personal experience or to whom cases are brought will have no hesitation in communicating them to me, in the knowledge that we are anxious to find a way to make the scheme work as smoothly as possible, that we can only do it if we know what the difficulties are, that we appreciate very much these things being brought to our notice, and that we appreciate suggestions as to how we could best deal with them.

Mr. A. Edwards: Have the Government, in going into this scheme, considered the cost to the State of bearing the whole of the insurance? Supposing we had all continued our insurance policies in exactly the same way, and the insurance companies had met all claims and then gone to the Government to reimburse them for all the extra charges due to the war, have the Government estimated the cost of doing that, as compared with the cost of doing it in the way in which they are doing it, and if so—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has already exhausted his right to speak and can only be allowed to ask a question.

Mr. Edwards: Then may I put my question briefly? Is it not the fact that all the moneys which they do collect in the way they are doing now are ulti-


mately borne by the State, and would not the other way of guaranteeing the insurance companies be more economical?

Mr. Stanley: I do not think I can go over that matter again. We discussed at great length, when the Bill passed through the House, why we had an insurance scheme, and I have given my reasons again to-night why I thought that that scheme was necessary.

Mr. Higgs: Is my right hon. Friend going to take any action against those firms which have not insured according to the Act?

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend is quite wrong in thinking that because a man postpones payment beyond the time in which he is liable for payment, he thereby escapes his obligations pro rata. With regard to taking proceedings, certainly a time will come when we shall, but we have had regard to the fact that some firms have had a great many difficulties in raising sums unexpectedly at a time like the present, when money is difficult to raise, and we do not want to increase hardships to people who genuinely intend to carry out their obligations as and when they can; but wherever we get a case of

a flagrant attempt to evade this duty, we shall take action.

Mr. Foot: Would the right hon. Gentleman deal with a small point which I put to him as to the effect on two tradesmen, one with stocks just over £1,000 and the other with stocks just under that amount? One is compelled to carry the burden of insurance and the other is exempted, and therefore the first is at a disadvantage compared with his competitor.

Mr. Stanley: That is so, but it is a thing which always emerges when you have a dividing line and one person is on one side and another person is on the other. I will certainly look into it and see whether there is anything one can do to smooth the jump from one to the other.

Mr. Foot: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered what seems to be the obvious remedy of letting everyone be exempted up to a certain figure, and of letting everything be insured over and above that figure?

Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Nine Minutes before Nine o'Clock.